


for those who stand long

by wreckageofstars



Series: time to change the road you're on [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: (fix it?? who am I kidding you know me better by now), (ill-advised time travel), AU, Gen, Han Solo is along for the ride and he is Not Very Happy about it, Leia-centric, TLJ Spoilers, TLJ fix-it, Time Travel Fix It, in which the skywalker twins take 'let the past die' a little bit too literally, this is (probably) not the sequel you were looking for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-02-28 18:38:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 56,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13277526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckageofstars/pseuds/wreckageofstars
Summary: Ben Solo has turned to the dark. The New Jedi Order lies in ashes around Luke Skywalker's feet. Leia Organa leads a resistance against a foe that should never have come to be. The culmination of their legacy is one of failure; one that can only be remedied by the most drastic of measures. But the Force works in mysterious ways – and the past won't be so easily extinguished.





	1. i.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (a clarification, if you're just coming across this work! It's technically a sequel, but more a thematic one than anything else, at least in my mind; all you really have to know is that the premise of this universe is only that Time Travel Is An Established Thing; that's all you really have to know, though reading the first work should enrich this one....I hope) 
> 
> Anyways, enjoy and thank you for reading!

Her personal comm was buzzing, but she already knew. She'd known for hours.

Han, a warm presence beside her where the two of them sat, squished together on the old bench seat she used for visitors, shifted, uncertain. His voice was rough. “Are you going to answer that?”

“I know who it is.”

D'Qar's watery afternoon light filtered in through her office's only window, a small, pathetic glimpse into the jungle beyond. She was lucky to have even that. It had been a fight, to ensure her office was at least partially aboveground, when it would have been safer in one of the lower levels. She had insisted on sunshine.

_Hope is like the sun –_

She couldn't finish the thought. Cold was pooled in her gut, a stark expanse of sunless night. She felt – startlingly numb. A sort of non-feeling, one that gripped her so tightly she wondered if her bones might crack with it. It was familiar, though she hadn't encountered it for years. Not since she'd watched Alderaan –

“Leia,” Han was saying, tentative in a way that made her inexplicably furious. He'd been so patient, ever since he'd found her, so uncharacteristically careful, hands gentle, voice quiet, draped in dread that was thick like syrup, and he hadn't questioned her once. They'd been sitting together, hunched together, in tandem, for hours, in silence. Waiting. She hadn't told him what for. “Do you think –”

 _No_ , she wanted to say. _I don't think. I don't want to think. And you don't want to either, because if we pick up that call we are both going to hear things we don't want to know._

Han was going to hear things he didn't want to know. She already knew. She'd known for hours. Felt it as a climb of ice up her throat, a stabbing pain behind her eyes, sunk to the floor of the 'fresher, her back against the cool tile and stayed there for a good half an hour, phantom smoke clogging her nose. Despair filling the space around her slowly, like the tide coming in. She'd known, then.

It had been mid-morning on D'Qar. Around midnight, where –

– where her son had been.

He wasn't there anymore. She wasn't sure where he'd gone. When she reached for him, she found only swirling darkness, bottomless, empty. Absent. She knew what it meant.

The buzzing of the comm was persistent. Whoever was on the other end ( _she knew exactly who was on the other end_ ) wasn't going to give up.

Han swallowed sharply. _Time's up_ , she thought, darkly amused, oddly comforted by the twinge of irritation that crossed his face. A glimpse of something normal in this sea of wrong. She liked it better than the careful hands and quiet voice.

“Look, honey, we can't just –” He reached over her, pressing the button on her desk that would accept the call. The buzzing stopped, the momentary silence merciful. Han's hand came to rest on her knee, the knuckles white.

“Luke.”

Her brother's face, charred with soot, blood caked into his left eyebrow, stared at her, broken, from the cockpit of his X-Wing, flickering blue and cold. Artoo cooed mournfully, out of sight.

She knew. She'd felt it the moment he had.

The blood had drained from her husband's face. Of the three of them, he was always the last to know. She was never sure if that was a blessing or a curse. She wasn't brave enough to ask.

“Ben,” he said, barely a whisper, fingers gripping her knee so hard it hurt. She let him. He knew what they'd been waiting for, now. Luke's silence confirmed what hadn't even been a question. In a way, they'd been waiting for this particular call for years and years. That didn't mean it was an easy thing to accept. Han's voice cracked. “Oh, my boy.”

 _I'm sorry_ , Luke was opening his mouth to say, and she could hear it, the tangled thread of explanation and self-recrimination that would follow, choking him. He would drown in its inadequacy and he knew it. But he was going to try anyway, because that was who her brother was, he was going to cloak himself in blame and then he was going to _leave her_ –

She could feel it. She'd had hours to feel it, to catch a glimpse of the future, unraveling in front of her like a spool of fine, Alderaanian silk. She could feel it in Han, too, that impulse, that drive, to run from consequence, run from failure, run from the fruits of their actions. Everyone always ran. Everyone except her.

( _But even you ran from the truth, once_ , something spiteful in the back of her head whispered, taunting. _Look at what you wrought, because of it. Look at where it lead you_.)

Something burned in the pit of her stomach, even though her hands stayed numb, fighting back the cold. Watery sunlight fell across her lap, a blurry, washed-out line. She wasn't going to drown in sorrow. She wouldn't be paralyzed by inaction. And she wasn't going to run. If she was going to drown, then it would be in fury, not ice. Not fury at her brother, and not at her son. Not even at the slimy, cowardly piece of filth that had taken him, seduced him, torn him away from his family, from the light. No, this was fury of a different sort, something deep-set and old, something that wavered and shook. Something existential. It sat wrong in her gut, sharp, aimless, simmering.

She would give it purpose. Spool the future back into recognizable shape, make it mean something, make it _worth_ something.

She cut her brother off.

“Don't,” she ground out. Pleading, though it wouldn't be recognizable as such to anyone but him. “Don't say anything. I already know.” His mouth closed, eyes dull with shame. The holo flickered uncertainly, like a candle about to go out. “Please come home.” The words were forced out through her teeth. “Please don't leave.”

He wouldn't refuse her. Not if she asked, and she hated – _hated_ that he'd made her ask. But she knew. If she said nothing, asked for nothing, then that was what she would receive, and in another life – maybe. Maybe that would have been her answer. To let him leave, let him deal with his failure the only way he'd been taught, but that burning inside of her promised something different, promised retribution for the way they'd all been wronged, promised a solution to their failed legacy, it was coiled like smoke at the back of her head, just a whisper, but a possibility. But she needed him for it. She needed him.

He needed her too, whether he still thought he deserved to or not.

“Come home,” she said again, pressure building behind her eyes that might have been tears and might have been worse. The Force – what she thought was probably the Force, no matter how she tried to avoid it, ignore it – trembled around her. Her voice didn't shake, but whatever it was that connected them, whatever it was that allowed her to feel what he felt, must have gotten through.

He bowed his head in a nod, and the hologram flickered out.

Han rose, taking a stumbling step towards the extinguished call. His face was bone white, jaw clenched, eyes wet.

“He was supposed to be safe,” he mumbled, turning, taking her upper arms in his shaking hands. She rose too, sorrow heavy in her gut, that tide of despair so determined to put out the same spark that it had lit. “He was supposed to be _safe_ there, how –”

 _How did we let this happen_? There was anger layered in there, blame and guilt, smothered under grief.

“This wasn't Luke's fault,” she warned, voice low, stepping closer. His arms closed in around her. She buried her nose in his chest, eyes closing, his heartbeat fast but steady against the frantic pounding of her own, the buried maelstrom of her thoughts. An anchor, always. A grizzled, loyal, unreliable anchor. He loved so deeply that it terrified him. They were the same that way, she thought. They both had to ruin everything good that ever happened to them, before it could fall apart by other means.

It wasn't a logic without reason. But they'd been happy, once. They'd gotten over themselves, a bit. Settled down. Lived. But that fear had always lurked, she thought. That fear of loss. Fear that if you didn't leave it all behind it might just fall apart anyway.

She supposed they'd been right after all.

“It wasn't any of our faults,” she whispered into his chest. “It was Snoke, whispering in his ear. It was his blood.” _And our secrets_ , she didn't say. None of their faults, all of their faults. It didn't matter. Some combination of it all had brought them to ruin regardless. “We loved him.”

“We do love him.” Han pulled away, face wrinkling into a frown, the lines on his forehead deeper every day. They were getting old, all of them. “Leia. We do love him.”

“Of course we do,” she said. _Hope is like the sun_ –

The thumb of his right hand, calloused, worn, brushed the top of her cheek. She placed her own smaller hand on top of his.

“We can fix this,” he said. His fingers were shaking. He was lying to her, but she didn't mind, for once.

“Yes,” she said. She wasn't lying, and it sent a flood of unease through him that she could taste in the air. Her own hands were steady, even if her eyes were wet. The numbness inside of her had spread, and it brought with it a clarity of thought. “We will.”

#

Luke arrived three days later, his X-Wing as charred and torn apart as he was, the fingers of his flesh hand clamped around Artoo's domed head like he might be blown away without him. He wouldn't say a single word, but though he surrendered his ship without complaint, he wouldn't let the mechanics take the droid.

“You should at least let them give poor Artoo an oil bath,” she said when she met him in the hangar, draped in a muted gown, a greyish green, to match the jungle. It was a traditional Alderaanian mourning style. Half-mourning. For a half-death.

Artoo whistled in what she thought might be agreement. D'Qar's jungle loomed lush and green behind them, the humid air misting in through the open bay doors. It smelled damp, alive. In the distance, she could hear one of her pilots getting a dressing down for tracking mud across the base. Life went on, even when it fell apart. Even as the spectre of the First Order loomed ever bigger. But D'Qar's watery sunlight fell cold on them both. The ice pooled in her gut had flooded to life at the sight of her brother, a stooped, white-knuckled shadow, bent out of shape by grief. Just a few weeks ago, he'd commed her at midnight specifically to show her a rare kind of frog he'd found while meditating by the Temple's lake. That delighted grin, all teeth, was seared onto the back of her brain. She wasn't sure if it might be the only way she'd ever see it again.

He stepped closer and smoke, real this time, wafted under her nose.

“You're going to apologize,” she said, reading his face, his thoughts. “But I wish you wouldn't. I don't think I could bear it.” She held out a steady hand and he took it, the charred, spindly metal of his ungloved hand cold under her firm grip. If he noticed the slight edge to her words, the tightness of her mouth, the desperate glint in her eyes that she'd been unable to banish so far, he didn't say anything, and for that, she was grateful. Artoo rolled alongside them as she lead him out of the hangar and down into the base itself, head still under the desperate grasp of Luke's other hand.

“Han's waiting in my office,” she explained as she lead them down the base's main hall, a never-ending corridor of what tended to be mud-spattered white and dingy, rusted metal, plant life struggling to encroach on their pristine walls where it crept in from the hangar entrance. There was just enough natural light, struggling in through the tiny transparisteel windows. Enough for a semblance of life. Officers averted their eyes as they trudged down the hall, though a few met her gaze sorrowfully. The Resistance, for better or for worse, was family of a sort. Family stuck together. One person's loss was everyone's.

Especially when that loss had the potential to ruin everything they'd been trying to build.

“I'm glad you came,” she told him quietly, as they rounded a final corner. “I'm glad you didn't leave.” And maybe to an outsider it looked like she was talking to a wall, the blankness of her brother's face giving no indication that anything she was saying was making it through, but his fingers in her hand squeezed, the air between them warming against the ever-present chill, and she knew.

The door to her office slid open and they slipped through, the lights dimmed, the atmosphere within stilted and quiet. Han had been hunched over in her desk chair, shoulders stiff, head bowed, but he stood as they entered. Chewie stood too, where he'd been similarly hunched over at the bench seat. He growled a solemn greeting. It almost would have been funny if it wasn't so heartbreaking, if it hadn't all been so painfully real, but in some ways he'd taken the news the worst of all of them. He'd loved Ben like one of his own cubs, and betraying one's family was unthinkable to a Wookie. An unbelievable crime.

In her family, it was just tradition, apparently.

“You look like shavit,” Han said to Luke in greeting, roughness tinged with worry, the communication layered in a way that even she, a seasoned politician, had trouble deciphering. It came across stiff, unforgiving, but it wasn't quite. Chewie moaned in agreement, and, disregarding the tense atmosphere completely (and she was sure it was deliberate), tugged Han closer before he could protest and wrapped the three of them in his arms. A low groaning trill filled her ears. Words of comfort.

Luke momentarily let go of Artoo to pat Chewie gently on the arm. That alone probably made the gesture worth it, she thought gratefully, tiredly, some kind of warmth climbing up her throat. But it was warmth of a different sort. Not joyful warmth, but warmth all the same. Four desperate people, clinging to each other. Family.

Family. But maybe not for much longer. The future unspooled before her. She would take this moment while she still could.

She ducked out of Chewie's grasp with a flutter of regret that she swallowed back, along with everything else. Her brother had shattered, and Han had too, in his own way, but she couldn't afford to. She never had before, and she wouldn't now. She had duties beyond what she felt. Especially now. She had to separate herself from herself and that's what she had done. Locked away the parts of her that hurt. Left only the parts that floated, the parts that burned. The parts that would do what needed to be done.

“Sit down, please,” she asked raspily. “We didn't come here to mourn. We came here to plan.” Now was the moment.

“Years ago,” she began, ignoring the worried frown carved into her husband's face. He'd gone back to the desk chair, swivelled it around. It was adjusted for her smaller height, so his knees stuck out comically. A few bands of light, shaped by the window blind, fell in strips across his face. “Before we defeated the Empire. My father received a visitor on the Tantive, brought to him by the rebel operative Fulcrum.” She hadn't thought of Aunt Ahsoka in years. Had always wondered what exactly had befallen her, but in the same breath had not precisely wanted to know. Knowledge was a burden. Sometimes it meant loss, and sometimes – sometimes that loss was greater than you could bear.

Case in point.

“I didn't put the pieces together for years,” she mused. “I suppose I thought it couldn't possibly be. But I have good reason to believe now that the visitor she brought was Anakin Skywalker.”

Blue eyes, sharper now than they had been a moment ago, met her own, even as Han scoffed from across the room.

“A rebel brought Darth Vader onto your dad's diplomatic vessel and everybody left with all their limbs? No way, Princess.”

“Not Darth Vader.” Her eyes hadn't left Luke's. “Anakin Skywalker. Before his fall. I think he was a visitor from out of time.” She paused, the Force cooling the back of her neck. The phantom sound of shifting sand filled her ears, suns warming her back for a fleeting moment. She wanted to laugh. “You met him too,” she breathed, ignoring Han's misgivings (' _Gives me the creeps when you do that,_ ' he muttered). “Father did send them to Tatooine.”

Luke nodded, though he was frowning now too, concerned. Wondering, like the rest of them, where she was taking them. _Not where you think_ , she thought harshly, but that was uncharitable, maybe. Cold bracketed her again, fighting to climb up her spine, but the smoke in the pit of her stomach fought it back. This was their answer. She knew it as surely as she knew the shape of stars in the sky. As surely as she knew the freckles on Ben's face.

“If there's a way forward, there's a way back,” she said.

“Leia,” Han said, catching on, less derisive than he had been a moment ago, and she hated it, _hated it_. “Time travel isn't possible. It's just – not. And even if it was, what could we possibly do? Take Snoke out in the cradle? Someone else would just take his place. Or maybe not, and we lose our son a different way.” His face was lined in old, old pain. A careful sympathy. Both hurt her, all the way to the bone. “We should go after him right now. While there's still a chance.”

 _Hope is like the sun_ –

“It's too late for that. Besides. Through the Force, all things are possible,” and the words rang true in her mouth, even if they weren't her own. “It is, isn't it. Luke?”

His hesitation was only brief. He nodded, fingers twisting in the soot-covered fabric of his robe. She could taste his trepidation in the air, regret and grief thick like a cloud around him, but he was telling the truth.

“We have lost so much.” Han had tensed, but she ignored him. Whether he agreed with her or not didn't matter. None of it did anymore. “We have – cost the galaxy so much. Not our actions, but our – our _existence_. Our father's. Our son's. Pain and suffering and failure. That's our legacy.” She looked to Luke, begging with her eyes. “Don't you want to change it?”

He didn't answer either, but she could feel him, feel that he didn't have the capacity to want anything right now. To want anything other than his own destruction, and it hurt her to know that, it did, but she was far away from herself. Far away from everything that hurt.

And she could grant him that.

“I don't want to kill Snoke,” she said, distant, detached from herself. “Han's right, there's too many things that had to have happened for our – for Ben to have – to have fallen. It's too late for that. I want to go earlier.”

She looked back to Luke. She could grant him that. His own destruction.

“I want to kill our father,” she said. “I want to save the galaxy from our family.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (sorry for this long-ass author's note, guys, buckle up)  
> so......like it says in the tags, this is probably not the sequel you were looking for (and on that note, please do read 'time to change the road you're on' before this, because otherwise parts of this will probably not...make that much sense lol), but a straight up follow-up is actually in the works too! as a matter of fact, (and I was just not going to say anything and just do it, but then this monster of a fic wanted to happen first, so) if you look very carefully in my works you might find that said sequel already exists.....albeit in unfinished form, and desperately in need of a revamp. 'all things said and done' came into existence before TTCRO, but in writing the latter I came to realize that the two could actually tie in quite nicely together, so that's in the works at the moment, and I'll likely polish it up and finish it once this is finished. I'm not anticipating a crazy length, but I am starting school again in a few days, so updates will likely be a bit sporadic.
> 
> but, on that note, I'm really excited to dip my toe into the sequel trilogy! The original trio are my favourites, but I've never stumbled into the right story for all three of them until now. I loved (do you hear me? LOVED) TLJ, so this fix-it (ahahaha) isn't one that's mean-spirited, or because I hated the actual plot. I thought it was fantastic, and for a movie medium, and for a Star Wars movie in particular, I thought it was wonderful and surprising (even though it ripped out my heart through my oesophagus). But fanfiction is all about exploring the might have beens, and I thought this was an interesting place to jump off. The period of time this chapter covers hasn't been straight up addressed in canon yet I don't think (though I'm sure there'll be some supplementary material that eventually retcons all of this haha), so pardon any eventual inaccuracies. I admit I'm not fully up to date on all of the new EU stuff, so again, please forgive any errors in that regard. 
> 
> anyways, thank you so, so much for reading, and please let me know what you thought!  
> \- W


	2. ii.

The chorus of comically overlapping disapproval that she expected never came. There was only Han, steeped in horror so thick it brought tears to her eyes. Chewie moaned, low and terrible, heartbroken.

“No,” Han said, rising from the office chair slowly, movement stilted, like he was trying not to startle. His breathing was unsteady. Like maybe he was trying not to cry, only that was too horrible a thought to bring to completion. Watery light still fell in strips across his face. “No, that's not – that's not happening. This is not happening. Leia.”

“Luke,” she said, turning her face from Han's so she wouldn't have to look. “Luke?”

His face was just as horrible to look at, though it was free of tears. It was free of everything. His voice was a rasp that made her own throat sting in sympathy. “I will do,” he said, looking back at her bleakly, each word feeling torn from his throat, “whatever you ask.”

The tone of it all edged too close to an apology for her liking, but she let it slide. She had asked.

“You know how to do it,” she said, feeling it, _knowing it_ , Han's gaze burning into her back. She kept ignoring it. He was the only one who might have even the smallest chance of undoing her resolve, and that would be unacceptable. That outcome was unacceptable. She couldn't look him in the eye. She couldn't let him touch her. She'd lost their son. She could fix this.

Luke swallowed gingerly in response, hand still all but vacuum-sealed onto Artoo's head. The fleeting thought crossed her mind that his iron grip on the poor droid might be more for balance than for comfort, but in the end she suspected it was a combination. The air around him was cold, unbalanced. Despair filled the space between them, like the tide of oceans they could only imagine, even still. It was tugging at her feet, but he was drowning in it.

She could fix that too.

“You don't have to say anything,” she said. “Just take us where we need to go.”

“Leia,” Han said. He'd moved closer while she was distracted. She could smell him, the ever-present scent of engine oil he never managed to wash out of his sleeves, a whiff of the cheap cologne he insisted on wearing, even though Lando sent far better stuff every year for Life Day. Tension, wound into his voice, into the air. Something that tasted desperate. “Take a minute, think this through!”

“This,” she replied, “is not something that's up for discussion.”

“ _Not up for_ – ” His jaw worked, the blood still drained from his cheeks. “You don't think I have a say in this?”

The truth was he had far too much say in it, but she couldn't let him know that.

The truth was that she could see the future spiralling out in front of her, unravelling like a fine piece of thread, and that thread would continue to unspool and unspool, onwards into endless night, and she didn't want to follow it. Couldn't follow it, into a place with no sun. She would drown there. She would drown there and she would drag him under too.

She couldn't afford to drown. _This_ was how she would stay afloat. _This_ was how she would set everything right. Nothingness was better than an existence with no sun. A life spent in the dark, scrabbling for the light. She'd spent her life in the service of others, in the service of justice, and all of it, _all of it_ might be for nothing, and that was what would truly rend the sun from the sky. Her legacy. Always drenched in so much blood. And so she would erase it.

Their lives were so small, compared to everything that would flourish in their absence.

“You have all the say in the world,” she said quietly. She loved him. Of course he did. “Which is why I'm not going to let you have it.”

She turned on her heel, Chewie howling at her back, Han tugging at her sleeve, gentleness gone but only because she'd left him no other choice. Luke, a shadow at their side, stock-still, silent. More of an absence than a person, and that – that would hurt, if she took more than a minute to think about it, and so she didn't.

“Let me go,” she told him. The window blinds shook and her brother flinched. Han held firm, face creased in pain, in the anger he was trying to smother it with.

“Not happening, your worship,” he told her tightly. “Think about this, Leia, think about it! So you go back in time and snuff dear old dad out in the cradle, and _believe me_ , I am sympathetic, but just think! He wasn't the only player on the dejarik board. What about the Emperor?”

“So we kill him too,” she snapped. There were solutions here, _he wasn't listening to her_ –

He shook his head, mouth tightening. “You're not thinking right,” he said. “And that's okay, that's alright, but if you'd just _slow down_ we can – ”

“What?” She tore her sleeve out of his grip, ignored the wince that crossed his face. “Hop in the Falcon, go after our son?”

“ _Yes_ – ”

“And then _what_.” His face fell into shadow. “We have no idea where he is,” she continued. “No idea where he's gone. All we know is what he's done.” _Hope is like the sun –_ “I love him,” she said, because that was what it meant to be a parent. “And so do you. We always have. It didn't change anything.”

“You'd rather – ” His mouth twisted, because _he didn't understand_ – “You'd rather erase us all from existence, than go after your son? He's a _child_ , Leia.”

“He's really not,” she said gently. “But you're right. We let him down. We failed him, too. But when I think of him, I see – I see our child, but I also see a cycle. A cycle that begins and ends with our family. A cycle that begins and ends in failure, every time. He became what he is because of what we are. Even if we tie him up and bring him back, he'll have to live with that, struggle with that for the rest of his life. He deserves better than that.”

She'd tried to hide his history from him, bury the past, protect him from his legacy, but it had all gone wrong. Maybe that was the lesson. You couldn't just hide from your past. You had to erase it.

“You always believed in us,” he said. “Every time.”

“You always forget,” she said. “I can see things you can't.”

Without the option, she might have lived with it. All of it. That thread unravelled too, the thread where she stayed behind and mourned behind a closed door, where Luke's absence became something physical too, where her marriage fell apart, worn away by shared, unresolved grief. Where she waited in the dark for the sun to come out again. Alone. And she could do that – would do that, _had_ done it. Hope was a weapon, and she had always been the one who wielded it. Wielded it without necessarily possessing it. She'd fought against darkness her whole life. She could do it.

Or she could make it so that darkness never even existed. Wasn't that better? Wasn't that far more practical? Wasn't that the option that would bring her the best outcome? The option that would make everything right? The option that would dispense the most justice?

The option that would bring the most hope.

“You're really gonna go through with this,” Han breathed. His hands, down at his sides, were shaking and she ached to hold them, but she wouldn't. She'd reached the end of her spool of thread.

“Yes,” she said. “I am.”

 

#

 

“You don't have to come, you know,” she told Han as she clambered up the ramp of the Falcon, her dress left folded neatly on her bed, her hair braided smartly behind her. Nowhere near as intricate as it could have been or should have been, but she figured literally tempting fate probably warranted a more practical style of accessorizing. Her favourite blaster was strapped to her hip. Fully charged.

Han sputtered. “ _Don't have to_ – ”

He clambered up alongside her, stuck a bony finger in her face, and it was such a familiar sight that she almost laughed.

“If you two idiots are set on erasing yourselves from existence then _fine_ , but you can be damn well sure that I'm coming along for the ride!” His jaw jumped. “ _But I'm not gonna like it._ ”

“Just don't get in the way, flyboy,” she muttered fondly, pushing his hand out of her face. Han was – messy. He would make this harder than it had to be, just because that was who he was, but she couldn't find it in herself, even numbed as she was, to push him away entirely. The truth was she wanted him there. Wanted him there in her last moments. She deserved that much, maybe. And it might have been true that it was cruel on her part, but the fact of the matter was that it wouldn't hurt him for long. She'd be there – and then she never would have been. You couldn't miss what you'd never had. “If you're coming along, then you have to promise me you'll let me do what I need to do.”

He wouldn't, she knew as soon as the words left her mouth, and she was right. His mouth tightened. Eyes old and sad, and she'd caused that. She'd caused it.

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her cheek, stubble scratchy against her skin. Engine oil, hot breath, under her nose. _Home_. For however long they had left. “No promises,” he said roughly.

He moved away and she was left cold.

“The kid already inside?”

“He's not a kid,” she said, faintly amused, the exchange familiar, ridiculous. “And yes, he is. Plotting the coordinates.”

“Coordinates for what?”

“That's the question of the hour,” she said, though she could feel it, see it, the shape of whatever they were after imprinted on the back of her mind. Fuzzy, intangible. And – cold. That was the thing about knowledge, she supposed. Even willingly shared, it was useless without context. “I guess we should find out.” She paused, lingering at the Falcon's entrance. They were leaving without telling anyone. There would be no explanation for their absence, in the dead of night, and there would be no immediate questions either – she was the leader of the Resistance. Their general, and she didn't always tell them everything. But it felt like abandonment, betrayal, even though it wasn't. She had to keep telling herself that. It wasn't. It was in their interest.

It wouldn't hurt them for long.

“You're really coming?” she asked, just to be sure, and she was half gratitude, half despair. Torn apart.

“You're stuck with me,” he confirmed, grizzled, cantankerous. The beleaguered ' _obviously_ ' was left implied. “But don't think we're done talking about this. You – you broke Chewie's heart, y'know. That doesn't fly in this family. Do you have any idea how hard it was to convince the poor fuzzball to stay?”

It was something of a hallmark of their relationship, that they didn't always hear what the other was trying to say. But she heard, this time. Smiled gently.

“He won't be sad for much longer,” she said, and though it was meant to be a comfort, she turned before she had to see his face twist. Into the coolness of the Falcon's interior, the humidity of the outside melting away, replaced by manufactured dryness. A bit stale, if she was being honest, but they hadn't truly lived out of the Falcon for years and years now. They hadn't had cause to venture from the base in weeks. Even still, it felt more like a home than any place she'd tried to settle since Alderaan had –

She settled against the wall, cool metal bleeding onto her skin through her tunic shirt, and watched her brother program coordinates. He was practiced at it, fingers moving swiftly, even though for him, too, it had been a long time since he'd been anywhere near the Falcon.

“Where are you taking us?” she asked, voice echoing tinnily. Han, she thought, had stopped to check the engines. It felt – empty, in the cockpit, just the two of them. Luke flinched at the sound, startled, though he should have noticed her. The hand she placed on his arm was in apology, as she leaned over his shoulder to squint at the coordinates, trying to ignore the shadow of him in the Force, the way her awareness of him within it slipped and slid from her grasp like a bar of soap. She hadn't let him run. She thought maybe he was trying to retreat inside instead.

“Tatooine,” she said, tucking the thought away for now. And she could still feel it, the barest hint of irritated resignation, smothered under layers and layers of what felt like smoke, thick and caustic. Luke looked to her, one eyebrow quirked, expression rueful. As if to say, ' _well, where else_?'.

Han's voice rang out behind her before she could reply. His irritation wasn't smothered by anything.

“That dust-bucket? Why in _Sith hell_ – ”

“That's where you're going if you don't shut up about it,” she tossed back, just as irritated now, though some ridiculous part of her was grateful. She knew how to do it; the scowling, the heated conversations, the arguments drenched in subtext. Home ground, whatever that said about them as a couple. Han had a tendency to bury any emotion he didn't know what to do with in anger – it was only when he let you know how he was really feeling that you were ever in trouble. She could pretend, like this. “Luke knows what he's doing.”

Han pressed his lips together, annoyed. Unconvinced, and maybe she couldn't blame him, though that was another thought that she smothered determinedly.

“Luke,” Han hissed her way, as her brother slipped quietly out of the cockpit, into one of the Falcon's back rooms, “looks like he could use a hundred-year nap and a burn unit.” His face softened, but it was impossible subtle. “Look,” he said, voice still hushed, “I admit he's not my favourite person at the moment, but did you even ask if he was okay, before you decided to drag him halfway across the galaxy?” His gaze burned into hers. “You know he's only going along with this _insanity_ because he thinks he owes it to you.”

“ _My brother_ ,” she emphasized, “is going along with this because he wants to die, Han.”

His throat bobbed at that, and she felt something hot and sick at the base of her throat, something that might have been shame if she took a moment to examine it. She didn't.

“How is that better?” he choked out.

 _It's not_ , she didn't say. _Of course it's not_.

“There's nothing I can do about it,” she said, feeling pressure behind her eyes, fingers numb. “We're all trying our best, Han.” The words rang a bit – wrong, sat like rocks in her stomach, but they were all that she had to offer. “You're along for the ride, remember?”

“I wish I could forget,” he told her, grimacing, folding himself into the pilot's seat with a grunt. He looked back up to her, expression inscrutable. “Well?” he said. His eyes were dark. “Care to co-pilot, on the way to your own demise?”

“I'd like nothing better,” she said forcefully, taking him at his word, vindicated and dismayed by the scowl that crossed his face. She sat herself down in Chewbacca's chair, still dwarfed by it, after all these years. Her feet dangled centimetres off the ground.

“ _Fine_. Great. Next stop, the back end of nowhere,” Han muttered, shifting uneasily. Leia leaned back in her seat, gazing at him sideways. He glanced at her only briefly, before his teeth gritted. He fixed his gaze to the viewscreen.

“I've got a bad feeling about this,” he said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uughggghhhh okay I promise this gets a little more light-hearted. Soon. Eventually. Maybe. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> all jokes aside, this is a little short, but the part it was attached to was getting a little long, and I like things (like, plots, arcs, loose ends lol) best in threes, so?? I think it's gonna work. bear with, as always. 
> 
> I'm back in uni full time, so, like I said before, expect the unexpected re. updates, but this is fairly planned out, so it shouldn't?? be too bad?? Famous last words, but we'll see. Shorter chapters like this are certainly easier to churn out fast, but plot wise that doesn't always fly haha. Sometimes you just have to cut things when the dramatic tension tells you to. I'm very excited for what's coming though, so hopefully the next chapter won't be too far away!
> 
> Anyways, hope you folks are enjoying the ride better than Han Solo! Thank you for reading!!
> 
> \- W
> 
> (and PS - I never ever do this, because it's down in the old profile, but if you're not inclined to browse through there, just wanted to let y'all know you can find me on tumblr @sunshinedaysforever - I don't post much (I'm a chronic lurker and tbh tumblr confuses the hell out of me even though technically I live there) but I'm happy to talk about writing and stuff if that's what y'all want, and I'm always looking for more star wars fans to follow!)


	3. iii.

Tatooine never seemed to change.

It was just one of those places, Leia supposed, remembering how she'd thought the same before, when it had been under Imperial occupation. Empires rose and fell overtop of it. She winced at the grit of sand between her teeth and pushed forward, Han a shadow at her side, Luke a dark beacon in front of her. They'd left the Falcon in Mos Eisley, pushed forward into the frontier on rented speeder bikes, to her husband's great consternation. They'd abandoned them at the foothills of the Jundland Wastes and pressed forward on foot.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Han muttered to her as they followed, early evening throwing orange light and dusky shadows at his face. The sand whispered behind them. He threw a sideways glance in her direction. “You have any more feelings about what exactly we're doing here?”

“Thought that also gave you the creeps,” she said in reply, a bit snarkier than she had intended, but the air was close here, despite its dryness. It pressed down on them, in a way she'd never noticed before. She felt eyes on the back of her neck.

Han bit back a reply, face twisting through a series of expressions that ended in exhaustion. “Just askin', Princess.”

“He knows what he's doing,” she reassured, belatedly. “We just have to follow.”

Not that she had to tell him that, really. Han Solo would follow either or the both of them to the ends of the galaxy. He had before.

He was doing it now.

“You don't have to tell me that,” he shot back, irritated. He lowered his voice. Not enough to be truly discrete, but she wasn't sure he was actually capable of that. “I just – wouldn't mind a little verbal confirmation.” His eyes flicked forward briefly, catching on her brother, a hunched silhouette, blanketed by the growing shadows of the cliffs rising above them. “The radio silence. He ever pulled that one before?”

Her lips pressed together. “No.”

“What _happened_ , Leia?”

Out here, in the midst of shifting sand, waning sunlight, it all felt very far away. But she caught smoke under her nose, flames at the corner of her eyes, the Force a sucking vacuum, cold and dark –

“You don't want to know,” she said, trying and failing to keep her voice from cracking.

“Don't I?” Han pressed closer, indignant. She fought against the urge to increase her pace. “I'm his father.”

“That's why you don't want to know.”

He ground to a halt, sand grinding under his feet.

“He hasn't told you either,” he said, and she bit her tongue. He was right, in a way – but also not. Luke hadn't told her a single word of what had happened, but he hadn't had to. She'd been right there. She'd felt everything he had – at a distance.

“It's complicated,” she said. “He – he just _fell_ , Han.” Despite everything, or maybe because of it.

She could tell him what she knew, what she'd felt. He did deserve to know, probably, but she was too lost in her own head to know whether it would be cruelty or kindness to tell him. And so, really, it all fell down to what the consequences would be.

She had a feeling in her gut that they wouldn't be pretty.

It was just that from the outside – from the outside –

It looked bad. It felt bad, felt _wrong_ , and though the mother in her ached to find some outlet for blame, the sister in her knew better. She didn't blame Luke. She'd felt everything he had, she had context, she had the lingering taste of smoke and failure coating the inside of her mouth, sour. A moment of fear, of _instinct_ , and their lives had all come crashing down, like a house of sabbac cards. And if their lives had been so fragile in the first place, then it couldn't possibly be his fault. Not his alone.

She didn't blame him. She _didn't_.

But Han didn't know what she knew, and he couldn't feel what she felt, and so he wouldn't understand. It was protection, of a sort. She could tell herself that at least.

“ _Complicated_ ,” he said, and it lacked the vitriol she might have expected. “Yeah, all right.”

“Han –”

“I said all right! Let's just leave it, then. Got better things to worry about.”

Hurt, floating in the air between them, caught in the wind, and the shape of it was familiar to her but she didn't know how to resolve it. She wasn't sure it could be resolved.

It didn't matter. Soon, none of it would matter. One foot in front of the other, following Luke's footsteps in the sand, until they found whatever they'd come for. That was all she had to do.

“We're almost there.” It was easier just to move forward.

So they walked in tense, familiar silence until General Kenobi's hut finally came into view, the suns finally setting just behind it, long shadows settling in front of it. She'd only been to see it a handful of times, and it seemed to grow shabbier, more desolate with every visit – and it had been shabby to begin with. In the time since she'd last seen it the sand and wind had smoothed away its sides, carved away the edges and blown off some of the roof.

“Just as creepy as always,” Han muttered as they approached, words lifted by the wind howling above them, echoing down the canyon. She caught sight of her brother, waiting for them in the entrance, silhouette swallowed by the door. “Why does Luke keep anything here, anyway? This planet's just shy of the shadiest place in the galaxy. Doesn't he worry about his things being stolen?”

“Han.” She regarded him, gently amused against the pull of the tide in her chest. “Do you feel comfortable here?”

“ _No_ ,” he all but spat. “I told you, it gives me the creeps. Oh.” His lips flattened, resigned. “Force mumbo jumbo. Gotcha.”

 _There's about to be a hell of a lot more where that came from_ , she thought, but didn't say.

“It's not that, exactly.” Their footsteps ground against the sand, muffled by the wind. The feeling of eyes on the back of her neck only grew as they got closer to the hut. It was worse, in the dark. “It's just – things left behind. Impressions. The Force collects them.”

“So it's haunted.”

“ _No_. It's just – the past. Hanging on.”

“Huh.” Han hung back, just shy of the entrance. His face had gone cagey. “It feels – sad.”

It did, she supposed. It always had. But it was hard to hone in on precisely. Luke's presence, like a vacuum, tugged at the edges of her mind. He was doing it unconsciously, she thought. It happened sometimes, when he was distracted, when they were near enough to each other. His own emotions would tug at her own, worry them apart like an unravelling sleeve. His guilt, buried under layers and layers of cold, sat like stone in her gut and made a home next to her own.

“Well,” she said, sucking in a breath. “He had a lot to be sad about.”

It was true, though. There was something in the air, some indefinable sensation pressing down on all of them, and she wasn't certain it had always been there. She wanted to leave, before whatever it was became more tangible.

“Luke,” she said quietly, finally making it to where he was frozen in the doorway, face concealed by its shadows. He'd stopped some mere centimetres away from actually entering. “You didn't fail him,” she said quietly, catching the edge of his thoughts, ignoring Han's uneasy shifting behind them. “And even if you did, you know he'd forgive you.”

It was the truth. There were no vengeful ghosts waiting for them inside – just the echoes of a life that had been lived in regret and solitude. And hope, she thought. That was what Luke had been, to old Kenobi. So maybe it did feel like failure. To have to return to where it had all began, when all of it had burned to ashes at your feet, when you'd come full circle in the worst possible way.

But it was a cruel thing, she thought, to place all that hope like a burden on one person's shoulders. Not intentionally cruel, but cruel nonetheless. Another mistake she could rectify.

“Please,” she said.

He stepped inside. He wouldn't – maybe couldn't – refuse her and it warmed her heart even as it made her throat constrict. She couldn't tell if what he was doing was out of love or out of debt. Guilt. Out of some legitimate desire to stop existing. All of the above. Her reasoning for it all had settled cold like iron at the back of her head, and she could see that it was the pragmatic thing to do, the dutiful thing to do. She could see it all laid out, the rationality of it, like a Senate budget. Mathematically precise and perfectly sensible. But her brother didn't think like she did. And right now, regardless of that, he wasn't thinking _right_.

Maybe it didn't matter, as long as the outcome was the same. If they achieved their goal, then maybe the means, the reasoning, maybe none of it mattered. She'd certainly encountered strains of that kind of thought during her political career, though she'd never before found much sympathy with them. Politics meant sacrifice, sometimes, but that sacrifice was always personal. It couldn't be at the expense of other people. It couldn't be at the expense of principle.

But this was personal sacrifice. It was literally that. And maybe at Han's expense, but only for a moment. She had been right before. It would only hurt for a moment.

And maybe her principles had burnt to ashes at her feet, like Luke's temple.

Han joined her at the entrance to the hut, where they stood together, protected from the outside wind. Luke clearly didn't want to linger. Head down, mouth pressed together, he unearthed a dusty box from an even dustier case, the hinges rusted and worn. Emerged with no triumph, an ancient sphere and something that looked sharp wrapped in a dingy rag in hand.

“What is that?” Han approached with interest, nose wrinkling.

“A compass,” Leia answered for him, recognizing the sphere from her brother's assortment of ancient Jedi relics. He'd carted them around for a couple years before finally giving them a home in his temple. Not all of them, she supposed. Her heart gave another twist. Most of them had already been salvaged from what remained of the first purge of Jedi – it was a sick, twisted kind of irony that they'd been destroyed in yet another. “The one you – _liberated_ from Pillio, right?”

Her brother's face said everything she'd been thinking, but he nodded. He pressed the other object into her hands and exited the hut, compass white-knuckled between his fingers, hunching deeper into his robe.

“And that?”

The sharper, wrapped relic throbbed in the darkness. Cold, and a bit – slimy. Sharp in the Force as well as in hand. She unwrapped it gingerly, taking note of the howling wind outside. It was louder now than it had been before.

She could tell that Han wasn't sure if he should have been unimpressed or disturbed. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Ominously glowing red triangle. Great. That bodes well.”

“It's a holocron,” she said, recognizing the shape, if not the actual feel of it. She'd encountered them before – learned from them, even. But not from anything quite like this. “But – not a Jedi one.” It was singing. No – _calling_. But it brought nausea to the back of her throat, a chill to the base of her spine. It was cold against her fingertips, pressed white against its sides. She shoved it into Han's arms, and he took it instinctively, though with a belated scowl.

“I don't want anything to do with any of this,” he said, trying to be rough, failing. His eyes were dark, but not with anger. The red glow of the holocron lit his face from underneath and left shadows under his eyes, his chin. But even under the admittedly ominous light, he would never look frightening to her.

“I know,” she said. “I'm sorry. I just –” She lifted her eyebrows, let a small smile escape. “It gives me the creeps.”

He wrapped it back up in its cloth, badly feigning resignation. “Guess it'll just have to stay with me then.”

“I can always count on you.”

“Yeah, well.” He sighed. “If I wake up with an extra limb or something I know who to blame.”

“That's not how the Force works,” she pointed out helpfully, ducking her chin into her collar as they left the hut, the wind throwing sand and dirt against her face with vigour. Not a true sandstorm, she didn't think. It was the wrong season.

“Well, how does it work then?” Han asked, voice raised against the moan of the wind. He wasn't wearing a scarf, and his jacket, old leather, battered, didn't have a collar big enough to hide his face in. “What's this weird triangle for anyway?”

“It's a key,” she said without thinking. Felt her gut twist. It was hard to tell what knowledge had been hers to begin with and what had been Luke's, when they were all mixed up like this, tangled up in each other's despair. Han was caught at the edges of her too, so different in the Force, but not because he was lacking it, exactly. Maybe just because he was hers.

It would be all too easy, to lose the thread that was herself. Hanging on took conscious thought. She couldn't slip. Not until her job was finished.

“The compass will lead us to the door” she said, too quietly. Her words were swallowed by the wind. “The holocron will open it.”

Han stopped, mouth set grim, wind blowing at his hair. The holocron glowed red through the rag, through the gaps in his fingers.

“And then?”

She turned to follow Luke, voice raised above the howl of the desert.

“Then we go through.”

If only it were that simple.

 

#

 

“ _I don't like this_!” Han hollered against the shuddering of the Falcon underneath them. “What does an uncolonized moon need with all this extra wind anyhow?”

“Would you just _land_?”

“On what?” They were close enough to the ground now that she could make out the cragged, jagged surface of the unnamed moon, orbiting around a similarly uninhabited planet. Too close to the Unknown Regions for her taste (too close to where the First Order had retreated, too close to where the Senate had forbid them from following, _too close_ – ), but they were following Luke's compass. She had no idea how it worked, or how it knew where to go, but she trusted her brother. Even if Han was clearly having reservations. Of course, he'd been having those reservation for every second of their three-day journey; she was almost used to the constant biting remarks. Preferred them to the grim silence that ensued in their place. “This is the last time I let you program the coordinates,” he shot over his shoulder, where Luke was hanging on, white-knuckled, to the edges of the wall. Her brother shrugged, a bit helplessly. “There's no even ground. This is impossible!”

“Get us down there, Han,” she ordered, fingers digging into the edge of her seat, fighting the urge to close her eyes against the shaking.

“That's what I'm _trying_ to – hey, toggle that, will you?” He guided her hand to a switch. “Yeah, like that.”

“You've landed in worse conditions than this.”

“Yeah, with Chewie's help!” He grit his teeth. “And a hell of a lot more luck. You get the feeling the universe isn't exactly happy with your little plan?”

“I don't give a damn,” she said, toggling the switch probably a bit harder than she had to. “Just – land. Before we all shake apart.” _We've come this far._

“On _what_?” he repeated. “Oh. Over there, maybe.” It was visible now, at the top of the viewscreen, a plateau of dark rock that looked like it might have been a landing platform once. “Okay, hang on.” Han scowled. “This isn't gonna be pretty.”

 _Is it ever_? But that was uncharitable, probably. Han was a good pilot. Most of the time.

She grit her own teeth against the constant shuddering, braced herself against her seat. A little turbulence wasn't going to stop them. She didn't care if it was a sign from the universe. She would see this through.

It took more complaining, and at one point so much shaking that she wondered if she might lose a tooth out of the whole ordeal, but Han finally managed to set them down on the plateau, landing with a rough shudder and an alarming scraping noise.

“You're damn lucky Chewie's not here,” he hissed as they disembarked, face falling in dismay at a newly formed mark on the Falcon's underbelly, where one of the jagged rocks had scraped away the finish. “He'd tear us all apart.”

The wind here – her brother hadn't given the place a name, and it didn't show up in any maps that she'd taken the time to peruse – was worse than Tatooine, a lonesome, ragged howl that whipped her hair out of its braid, away from her face. She tasted metal at the back of her mouth. It was cold, too. All the way to her bones. More of the jagged rocks – not quite mountains, but tall enough to tower – rose out of the ground around them and threw them into shadow. Like great spears had been driven through the earth from beneath. The wind made strange noises as it echoed through. Almost a song.

She shuddered. Not in any key that was pleasant to hear. Maybe it was for the better that this place had no name.

“Where?” she asked Luke, ignoring Han's irritated muttering. He seemed as disturbed as she was, face set grimly, shoulders hunched against the chill of the wind. He met her eyes for a long second, and then set off to her left, towards one of the larger rock structures.

“Come on,” she said to Han, following him into the wind.

“Toward the biggest, scariest rock,” he said. “Fantastic.”

“Don't be a baby.”

“ _Don't be a_ – ”

She swallowed back a snarl with difficulty. Three days in a confined space hadn't exactly done the three of them any good. It was stupid, resorting to bickering like children, when they had such little time left –

But it was better, maybe, than being left alone with each of their thoughts.

“Alright, I take it back,” she said. “You're not a baby. Just – take my hand and we'll walk towards the big scary rock together. Okay?”

“I don't need to hold your hand.”

“Do you _want_ to hold my hand?” The ' _laserbrain'_ , she left unspoken. They were adults, after all.

He scowled. Took it.

“Come on,” she said again, his fingers rough and familiar against her own. He squeezed.

“Alright,” he said. They set off after her brother, down the plateau's incline, where the suggestion of steps in the rock had left a steep, jagged way down to the surface. They made their way carefully. “But I don't get it. Look, you get a hyperdrive that malfunctions bad enough, maybe that messes with the time dilation. Thirty years pass in thirty seconds, you emerge in what feels like the future, yadda yadda. That's time travel, I guess. But weird singing rocks? That's what's gonna blast you to the past?”

“It's not the rocks,” she said. The closer they got the ground, the colder it got. There was something in the air – it shimmered, whispered. If you looked with just your eyes it showed you nothing, but she got the distinct sense that the air around them was being somehow twisted. “It's what's underneath.”

“And what's underneath?”

“Something old.”

She could tell he ached to snark in reply, smother the fear she could taste between them, but he swallowed it back and she was grateful. They marched the rest of the way in silence, hand in hand, until they caught up to Luke.

“Hell of a destination spot,” Han told him as they approached. “Really picturesque. So picturesque, I think maybe the three of us should just stay here a moment, _think this through_ a little more – ”

“Han.”

He stopped, shoulders slumping.

“I'm not gonna stop trying,” he muttered. He unearthed the holocron from where he'd stowed it in his jacket. “But here. Something tells this thing isn't gonna be of much use if I'm the one carrying it.”

Leia plucked it from his fingers, flinching slightly at the feel of it, but, after a moment of thought, handed it to her brother. He took it, dripping in reluctance. Not at the duty, exactly, she didn't think. He just didn't like touching it either.

“You're the expert,” she said. _The last and only_. “I think it should be you. Shall we?”

Han's big and scary rock towered over them; they'd converged near a crack at the bottom that, upon closer inspection, was less a natural occurrence and more a man-made entrance. They clambered through it gracelessly, grim with silence. The inside –

– it was rock, but more than that. Maybe something natural at one time, but in the dimness she could see ancient texts carved into the stone, edges smoothed away, the ceiling reaching above them for what might have been kilometres. Ancient. And a bit – holy. Or maybe the opposite. Their footsteps echoed.

She stumbled, foot catching on an upturned rock.

“How about some light?” Han wondered, before she could say anything, stop him.

There was a brief pause, and then the buzz of Luke's lightsaber filled the air. Flames caught at the edge of her vision, regret so thick she thought she might be sick with it, and for a second she saw her son's eyes, green reflecting glassily in pools of frightened black. But, besides the holocron, it was their only source of light. She watched him waver for a moment, caught in the tide; but her brother swallowed back his grief and pushed onward, green light casting sickly shadows on the shapes around them.

And now Ben's eyes were seared onto the back of her mind, afraid.

She pulled Han with her as she followed, his hand clenched in her own, and he didn't say anything, even against her suddenly bone-crunching grasp.

It got colder the deeper they went – a chill that ached, something that seemed to emanate from within rather than outside. For a while, far-away dripping and the familiar hum of Luke's lightsaber were the only sounds. They were alone here. That was what her eyes and ears told her.

They were not alone here.

“Luke,” she said finally, reluctantly. They'd been walking for half an hour. Her knees were beginning to ache, though she'd never admit it. “Do you feel that?”

“Feel what?” Han asked, before Luke could reply.

A gust of wind with no apparent point of origin blew past them, moaning. Han jumped, squeezing her hand reflexively.

She swallowed. “That.”

Luke drew closer to them, hesitant. He looked to her, mouth parted in askance, the glare from his saber throwing half his face into shadow.

“I know,” she said, raising her voice against the wind. It was growing in strength, emanating from deeper within the structure, however impossible that seemed. “But we have to go forward.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Han muttered, hunching in on himself, though it protected him little from the gale. He offered his free hand to Luke. “Even the wind thinks so. Come on,” he said, grudgingly. “Don't want you two to get blown over.”

“You're not that tall,” Leia muttered, though she was glad to see Luke take his hand. She felt safer, with all three of them close. It felt like some defence, against whatever they were walking into. Whatever she was forcing them into.

“Taller than _you_ ,” Han said, “though that's not saying much.”

“ _Han_ – ”

They continued forward in what was probably a ridiculous-looking huddle, hunched forward against the gusting wind. It sang against the rocks, made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. The air – the Force, it must have been – felt thicker down here, viscous, dark. Red and cold.

Wrong, in the pit of her stomach. There were voices, shapes at the edge of her vision. Ben. Calling her name.

Impossible.

She held tighter onto Han's hand, feeling light of breath. They trudged forward and the time that passed might have been minutes or hours. He and Luke were bathed in green and red, shadows catching in his hair, in the contours of his face –

His face. His – unweathered face. His hair, even under the garish light, no longer streaked through with grey. She hadn't noticed – she hadn't –

“Han,” she said, voice low but still pitched higher than it had been in years.

Her knees didn't ache anymore.

“ _Han_ ,” she repeated, alarm shrilling her tone.

He turned to her, bangs lifted by the wind, and there were years just – missing from his face, carved away by the wind. “What?” Blanched, as his eyes met hers. Had they all ever looked that young? He'd never really lost his roguishness, she thought shakily, but now it was startlingly less cantankerous. His mouth twisted. “Uh – _what in the nine hells_ – ”

“Okay,” she breathed, his fingers trapped in hers. _In and out_. The Force twisted and shook with the wind. “This place is one hell of a wrinkle cream.”

Luke's presence flared with alarm, and he was golden in her peripheral vision, wrapped in shadow. His lightsaber fumbled in his free hand. For a moment that she could feel, he was startled out of whatever trench of grief he'd been mired in. His eyes, when they met hers, were as blue as they'd been when she'd first encountered them – set wide in a youthful face, framed by shaggy hair, lightened by the sun. No beard to help him play the role of Jedi Master. But the shadows hugged his cheeks, clung to him like silk, and he wasn't the boy he had been when they'd met. Even if he looked the spitting image.

Han's voice was tight. “I take it this wasn't part of the plan?”

“ _No_ ,” she practically spat, unused to the pitch of her own voice, “obviously.” They'd paused to absorb the shock, but it was inconsequential, really. She dragged them along with her, lamenting briefly the loss of whatever few centimetres she'd gained in height between the ages of twenty and fifty. The wind hadn't stopped, and now she had even less in the way of drag resistance. “It must be something about this place.”

Luke had never stopped to explain exactly where they were or why they were there – and seemed just as disinclined to explain now as he'd been three days ago when he'd programmed in the coordinates. The explanations her own mind was churning out in place of the truth were myriad; Sith cults that worshipped time, dips and twists in the universe's fabric, the reverberations of some kind of artefact, hell – maybe the site of an ancient hyperdrive malfunction. She didn't know. She didn't care. None of it would matter for long.

“We keep going,” she ordered.

Han tugged at her hand. “Woah,” he said, “just hold on a second! What if – whatever's happening keeps getting worse the closer we get to – to whatever we're getting to? Pretty hard to hold a blaster when your hands are too small to fit around the handle!” There was something in his voice that told her he was speaking from experience.

“Well, we've already gone a few steps deeper. Do you feel any younger, laserbrain? Whatever it is that's happening has limits,” she hissed over the wind. “And we're not going to get distracted by it.” They were getting closer. There was a glow ahead of them, brighter, larger than the sources of light they carried with them. Colder. The wind was picking up.

“Come on,” she said, pulling at Han's hand, Luke stumbling alongside him. “Around the corner.”

“I hate,” Han muttered, voice almost lost to the wind, jacket flapping behind him as they rounded the edge, stumbled together into the garish light, “going around corners.” They stopped. “There's never anything nice waiting.”

It was just an obelisk. The lone point of interest in a cavern that was dark and wide and tall. That was what her eyes and ears told her.

But Luke had gone still as stone, frozen, and there was a chill in her bones that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air.

“This is it,” she whispered. She let go of Han's hand, but stayed close. “This is the doorway.”

Han's voice was skeptical. “And it opens...how?”

“Closer,” she urged, and they approached it, wind raging against them, huddled together like that might somehow prevent it from throwing them apart. Eyes on her, again, but the watched feeling wasn't as cold as she'd thought, against the true malevolence of whatever lived inside the cavern. Luke's lightsaber slammed shut with a hiss – he'd lost the battle with the wind, she thought; or maybe he just wanted a hand free – and in the absence of the sallow green, she caught a hint of blue at the corner of her eyes.

A hint of blue. And a voice.

 _Leia_.

“The holocron, Luke,” she said.

 _Leia, please_.

The wind – _the Force_ , she finally admitted to herself – was tugging at them all, warning them back, but she dug her heels into the ancient, cragged ground.

“Luke,” she said, more urgently. But he sensed the same thing she did, had paused with the holocron halfway out of whatever pocket he'd been keeping it in. “There's no time, don't listen – ”

Too much time, not enough. Either way, it was too late. Out of the wind, a shape coalesced, glowing soothing blue against the harsh red radiating from the obelisk, standing immaterial between them and its threatening shadow.

“ _Please_ ,” Ahsoka Tano said, shimmering blue and warm and light in the dark, empty air. Somehow Leia wasn't at all surprised. “ _Don't do this_.”

“Who – ” Han barked, at a loss, but she held him back with an arm laid across his chest.

“It's been a while,” she said, keenly aware of almost nothing but the cold, throbbing pulse of the holocron in her brother's hand. She kept her tone even. “You've never visited before.”

“ _This is an emergency_.” Ahsoka's form wasn't solid; it flickered and shook with the wind.

Han pressed closer to her, deeply alarmed, and it would have been slightly hilarious, but she didn't have _time_ –

“Leia, who _is_ this?” he demanded.

“An old friend.”

“An old friend – who is a ghost.”

“ _I'm not a ghost_ ,” Ahsoka said, and the flickering this time was irritation, Leia thought. “ _We don't have time for this. Leia, please. Search your feelings. You can't go through with this_.”

“I can,” Leia said. “And I will.”

“ _You can't erase the past_ ,” Ahsoka insisted, shimmering, warping, the effect somehow frantic. “ _You can only change the future_.”

“Leia,” Han said, hand at her elbow, his grip too tight, “I can't believe I'm saying this but I think we should listen to the ghost.”

The Force howled against them but she held fast, against the fierce burning in her ribs, the pounding in her head, the chill of ice climbing up her spine, wrong, wrong –

“ _Please, Leia_ ,” Ahsoka begged, a bright, hopeful spark in the dark sea around them, desperate, flickering. “ _Don't do this, don't write over our lives, they weren't perfect but they were ours, the mistakes we made were_ _ **ours**_ _–_ ”

“And now you'll never have to make them,” Leia ground out through her teeth.

“ _That's not how this works_.”

Existential fury, pounding against her ribcage, so cold that she would freeze with it. “How would you know?” she demanded, straining against Han's grip on her arm. “ _I remember_. You had the chance to change the past and you failed, you _failed_ – ” _Failed and left us all with this, died and left us all with this._

“ _I didn't._ ” Her eyes were so clear. Just like Leia remembered. “ _I didn't fail. You don't understand. I don't know how to – make you understand, I'm so sorry._ _I'm sorry that you've been hurt. But this is not the answer. This is against the will of the Force._ ”

“The will of the Force.” She dragged the words out through her teeth. “The will of the Force – that we fail? That everything burns?” She curled her lip. “I don't think so. I'm tired of this. I'm making it right.”

She'd burn them all to ash herself, first.

“I want justice,” she breathed. “And I'll get it. I'm sorry, Aunt Ahsoka.”

The wind, after all, was just the Force; Ahsoka was the same. Just an immaterial manifestation. What had been made could be unmade. She stepped through the wind and stepped through Ahsoka Tano's ghost, feeling desperation wash over them as the blue light dissolved. A cry that burned in her lungs echoed through the vast chamber, but it was already forgotten. Cold pulsed neatly in the centre of her chest.

“Leia,” Han whispered in the sudden absence of wind, but she ignored that too. She could feel his confusion like a bright spark, feel her brother's despair, pulling at them all like a tide.

“Luke,” she said. And he bowed his head, wrapped the Force around the holocron and set it floating towards the obelisk. And the obelisk – _pulled_ , like a vacuum, like something that had the potential to consume utterly, like nothing she'd ever felt before. For a moment it sang. And then – it woke.

“ _Who comes forth_?” it boomed, bathing them all in bloody light.

“Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker. And Han Solo,” she added belatedly. “The last of the Jedi.”

The presence seemed to hum contemplatively. 

“ _Do you seek power, Leia Organa_?”

“No,” she said. “Justice.”

“ _Justice_.” The air thrummed with energy, something old and cold and slick. It made her feel slightly ill. With aversion. With a terrible kind of want. “ _Is justice not a kind of power_?”

“Justice is justice.”

“ _Is justice not a kind of vengeance_? _Is vengeance not a kind of power_?”

It was her own desperation now, hammering at her throat.

“Who would I seek vengeance against?” she asked, heart pounding, stomach turning. “I seek justice for the galaxy, not myself.”

“ _You are in pain_. _You seek unbalance_ ,” the presence replied. “ _I will open the door for you._ ”

“Am I the only one that also agrees with the scary all-seeing voice?” Han hissed into her ear, breath hot on her neck. “Leia, this isn't – ”

“How is it done?” she asked.

“ _You seek unbalance. The rules are different_.” A pause, in the red half-darkness. “ _I require a vessel_. _To channel the Force, so that the door might be opened._ ”

“Then I volunteer,” she said sharply, stepping forward. A hand stopped her. Blue eyes met her own.

“What you're trying to do,” Luke said, his voice a rasp that ground sharply against her ears. “I could never do it.” _I couldn't even do it then_ , he didn't say, but she felt it, heard it clear as day. “Let me do this.”

Too close to an apology. He edged further towards one every time he opened his mouth, and she couldn't bear it, couldn't stand it –

She looked up at the obelisk. “Will he be alright?”

“ _The door might be opened. The door does not want to be opened._ ”

“That's not an answer.”

“ _The door does not want to be opened. To be a vessel is to sacrifice. But this vessel is strong_. _He might survive_.”

“Might?” Han interjected, edging closer, placing himself between them and the obelisk. Panic had lent an air of shrillness to his voice. “Okay, no, we're done here, time to pack it in, kids – ”

“Survival isn't the point of this,” she said grimly, feeling very cold. Feeling very wrong. “Luke?”

There was no resentment in his eyes at all. It felt like a kick to the stomach.

He turned to face the obelisk. “I'll do it. I volunteer.”

“Kid,” Han said, desperate, “you don't have to do this, _neither of you has to do any of this_ – ”

Luke had placed himself between them. Attached his lightsaber to his belt and took both of their hands in his. He closed his eyes. Leia kept her own open, choked back a gasp as the fabric of the Force was torn open, ripped apart.

The presence hummed. It knew what she knew, Leia thought. It knew where she wanted to go.

“ _Your sacrifice is accepted_. _I will grant your request_.”

Red, hideous light washed over them, Luke's hand tightening in her own. The light swallowed them and her world went bright and cold and sharp.

The door opened.

They stepped through together.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (sith holocron hot potato is my favourite party game, and now I hope it's yours too)
> 
> Bit of a longer one this week folks - again, thank you so much for reading, and for your lovely comments! I've seen a couple wondering about the exact nature of time travel in this universe, and I've kept it a bit vague deliberately - it's sort of an in-universe fact that the characters don't know what the hell is going on either, and I kind of like that ambiguity? But for people concerned, I think the question to ask is - did the Anakin Skywalker that travelled into the past originally create a new universe when he departed? Or did he arrive from a different one in the first place? I promise no concrete answers, but that's sort of where my line of thought leads, at least, if that's helpful.
> 
> anyways, again, thank you so much for reading, and please let me know your thoughts!
> 
> \- W


	4. iv.

For a moment that felt like eternity, her head was only full of white, boundless light and a scream that echoed right to her bones. It vibrated through her, burnt through her head, endless and unceasing, the Force ripped apart and torn around her, they were lost in it, _trapped_ –

But even eternity eventually had an end; and even years removed, the cold, metallic smell of Coruscant's automated rain was unmistakeable.

It had worked. The realization spread warmly through her chest, outmatched the ringing in her ears, the painful rawness of the Force, the burning in her sinuses. It had worked. _It had worked_.

“ – kid, _wake up_ – Leia, you gotta help me out here – ”

And just like that the warmth was sucked from her lungs as the world solidified around her. She sucked in a gasp, something warm and wet drying under her nose, the fabric of her knees soaked through by the damp metal floor she was kneeling on, hunched over.

It had worked.

“Han,” she gasped.

“Right here.” His face swam into view, disconcertingly young, pinched in worry. She could feel it in the Force, the sharpness of it. He palmed her face gently, fingers calloused, damp with rain water. “You okay?”

He was worried. Worried and afraid and it was her fault and it would be her fault when she erased the three of them from existence, she would have to look him in the face as she rewrote the world, look him in the eyes when already it was too hard, when she was so sure that all he saw was failure, _she had lost their son and now she had brought them here to die_ –

“Fine,” she said, head stinging, sinuses throbbing. Phantom pain. She wasn't sure it was hers. “I – I'm fine. Is Luke?”

“You're bleeding,” he frowned, his thumb swiping carefully underneath her nose, coming away red and damp. “So's he. Leia, he won't wake up.”

Her vision was clearing. She blinked a couple of times, trying to banish the last of the grit from her eyes, and swallowed harshly as the world around her sharpened. The three of them were sprawled in an alleyway, rusted and grungy, slick with water. She could hear it dripping off the pipes. Smell it, metallic and sharp. Han knelt beside her, the holocron poking far too haphazardly out of his front jacket pocket where he'd clearly shoved it in a panic. Luke's head was supported on his knee, and even in the perpetual gloom of Coruscant's underworld she could see that he was too pale, blood leaking from his nose, smeared where Han had tried to wipe some of it away. Han's hands, the edges of his sleeves, were sticky with their blood. His worry stabbed at her, sharp, but there was something else –

The Force felt warped and wrong. Burnt, somehow. And at the centre of it – her brother. She leaned forward, reaching out with her hand and with the Force. As her fingers pressed to his temple, grimy with leftover soot and now damp with rain, she skimmed clumsily against his mind, investigating gently, the way he'd taught her. But the Force caught raw against her careful grasp, the edges rough and torn, and her sinuses burned. She tasted fresh blood on her lip. Under her hand, Luke's face twisted in an unconscious flinch. She pulled away, shaking.

 _Something is very wrong_. But Han's worry was a frantic pulse, a shrill thread of panic against her own, and she couldn't unravel like that, couldn't let herself be pulled down with him. Luke had made his choice. Or maybe she'd made it for him. Either way, it was her fault, not Han's.

“He's alright,” she said, genuinely unsure if it was a lie or not, though she could taste blood on her lips. “I – I think. He's asleep.” Unconscious, asleep. Difficult to tell, really, but she hadn't caught the taste of any dreams, and so it was more likely to be the former. It hadn't felt dangerous, even if everything had felt a bit – singed. Exhaustion blanketed him like a cloak. “The Force is – wrong here, it's wrong in him. I don't know.”

It wasn't just Luke. The whole alleyway, the air around them, it felt twisted, torn. Ripped open. Remnants of the door they'd come through, maybe. The door that shouldn't have been opened.

“We have to leave here,” she said, struggling to her feet, the ground thrashing underneath her. She felt distinctly unsteady. Bit her lip hard to ignore it. “We have to – people will come to investigate and we can't be here, Han.”

He looked up at her, face creased, spine straight with tension.

“Where is here, anyway? Smells like Coruscant, but that's – investigate what, exactly?”

“ _This_ ,” she said, gesturing broadly, rain drops catching on her outstretched hand. “The – you can't feel it?”

He shook his head, and she frowned. Just the Force, then, but that didn't make her wrong. There had been Jedi on Coruscant, during the Clone War. That was when they'd landed, she was sure of it.

Darth Sidious, too.

“Well, anyone with the Force won't be able to ignore it,” she said firmly, cold creeping up her spine. Fumbled until her hand hit the blaster still at her hip, knuckles whitening around its hilt reassuringly. “We can't be caught by anyone, they'll have questions we can't answer.”

Han's face turned disgruntled. He didn't budge. “You're planning on blasting the timeline to bits, what's the big deal if you let a few other things slip along the way?”

“I can't _blast it to bits_ from the inside of a jail cell,” she said, tone biting. “Which is where we'll all end up, especially if we're caught right here, Sith holocron in hand, in the middle of a giant _rip in the fabric of reality_.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “If we're when I think we are, we won't stand a chance. There's Separatists in every shadow.”

His face darkened. “We are on Coruscant, then.”

“Yes,” she said, teeth gritted. “In the middle of the Clone War, if that door took us where I wanted it to, and unless you want us all to be arrested on suspicion of being Separatist saboteurs, we have to get out of this alley right now!”

“Fine,” he snapped, shifting. “But I sure hope you know what you're doing.”

“No, you don't,” she said, _knowing_. Bitter exhaustion twisted her mouth and made her knees shake. “But we're here. We made it. Help me see this through, Han.”

“Help me with your brother, first.” His eyes met hers, and a flash of shame ran through her, scalding. “If you can take that hand off your blaster. Been a while since I've graced these streets, but I'm pretty sure you'd be hard pressed to find the galaxy's head of state lurking around down in Coruscant's wet, smelly armpit.”

“Well, maybe you'd be surprised,” she hissed, but she knelt down to sling one of Luke's arms around her shoulder. The Force fizzled at the contact, and she drew back from it even as Luke's elbow settled around her neck, the slightly rough fabric of his tunic making her skin itch. It still reeked of smoke. The three of them probably looked and smelled a sight. Crumpled and damp, blood dried under their noses, under Han's fingernails, soot-covered. Dressed in clothes that didn't fit quite right, wouldn't look quite right to anyone who knew anything about fashion.

They had to leave, but they would have to stick to the shadows.

“Come on,” she said, taking a few overly ambitious steps, wincing slightly at the drag of Luke's feet against the rusted ground. On the plus side, she thought, still slightly dazed, at least her joints didn't ache anymore. “Let's get out of here.”

“And go where, exactly?” Han asked, tone still tinged with irritation, barely settled panic. He took hold of Luke's other arm without her having to ask. Something tight in her throat loosened at the gesture. “Not that I'm set on sticking around down here.” He shuddered in the gloom. “Nothing good lives in the dark. The last thing we need is a run in with some karking cthon.”

“You're more likely to run into a nest of hawk bats,” she said, leading them towards an ancient, rusted lift. “Seeing as how they _actually exist_.” She could feel the press of light, precarious, loud, just above them. They weren't so far down, really. “Don't worry. We're not far from civilization.”

“And then?”

She needed to get closer to the surface to be sure, but she could smell the faintest hint of grease in the air, feel the push and pull of people living close together, the oil-slick undercurrent of business being exchanged in a thousand different ways, some more savoury than others. The pulse of life, raucous, loud, against the rusted deluge of artificial rain.

“I think we're underneath CoCo Town,” she muttered, more to herself than to Han. It had been years since she'd set foot on Coruscant. It felt different. The shadows lurked instead of dominated. “I need to access the holonet.” A holoscreen might do it, but a computer would be better. That meant the Galactic Museum. Or the university library, maybe, but that was more of a trek, and they had –

Nothing, she realized, swallowing back a curse. Nothing except the blaster strapped to her hip. No credits, no papers, no transportation. Nothing that would sustain them until she completed her goal.

 _Stupid, stupid_ , something in her snarled, but she'd been grief-addled, coldly frantic, focused so narrowly, she hadn't been _thinking_  – 

She hadn't been sure it would even work.

Han had ground to a halt with her. He didn't have the Force, but he knew her well – knew her, she had to begrudgingly admit, better than anyone except maybe her brother, who could all but see into her mind and so probably didn't count. He saw the grim expression on her face, the flash of self-recrimination, and knew what it meant.

He sighed.

“Don't worry,” he said, old resignation settling grimly over his youthful face. “Just point me in the direction of the shadiest part of town. I'll sort us out.”

#

Years of military service and fatherhood had never really managed to strip Han Solo of the skills he'd grown up with. Leia suspected he'd kept more than a few of them sharp on the racing circuits he'd become increasingly enamoured with over the past few years, but knew better than to ask or look too closely. Besides, right now –

She was only grateful. Even if it had cost her the earrings off her head and her mother's favourite ornamental hair piece. One of her last pieces of Alderaan. She'd worn it for – luck. Providence. Tucked it into the base of her braid at the very last minute. But, she told herself sternly, biting her lip against the gloomy chill of CoCo Town's unsavoury sublevel, the fact of the matter was that it wasn't her last piece of Alderaan. Not anymore. That same hairpiece was probably in her mother's hair right now, or placed carefully on her bedroom vanity where it had often sat in her childhood, catching Alderaan's late afternoon sunlight.

If she had her way, now it would never be the last of anything. That was worth a little sacrifice.

Luke shifted where he was slumped against her, still not quite awake, but edging towards consciousness. She kept her eyes forward, her brow creased into a glare, the blaster on her hip prominent. Han had left them in the shadow of another alleyway, out of the rain, away from the crowd, but that was no excuse to invite danger. The trick, he'd told her before darting off into the throng of sentients – as if she didn't already know – was to make yourself look like you were more trouble than you were worth.

Well, her brother might have been only half-conscious, and the two of them together might have only looked the bare edge of twenty – but they were also smeared with dried blood and soot, and she'd draped the Force over them both, to hide, but also to deter. Not enough, she didn't think, to attract attention. But just enough to give the suggestion that messing with her would be a mistake.

In the mood she was in, it _would_ be a mistake.

But in the time that passed, they were largely left alone, and she let her mind drift – though not very far. Han was returning. She couldn't see him yet, in the dense crowd of passers-by, but she could feel him, a bright spark, nearing. Distinctive, somehow, though again, she was never sure exactly why. Familiar, when everything around her was not. She hadn't thought it would all be so different, really. She had no grasp of the Force the way her brother did, and that was by choice, but she'd never before realized how much of her world was coloured and shaped by it. Hadn't realized until the Force had _changed_.

There was so much light, here.

And there had been at home, too, of course there had been. Light on Alderaan, before it had been torn from the sky. Light in the corners of well-loved places, light in the hearts of the people they encountered, light when the edges of her teeth caught in a smile. Light left behind as the Empire retreated. People had it. Places had it. But it was something that had to be fought for, something that had to be pulled into existence, something that existed _despite_. And she could taste the edge of darkness here, too, find it in the back of her mouth, it lurked and sat, waiting – but it hadn't won. Even in Coruscant's dregs, even in it's darkest corners, this hub of unsavoury business and desperate people and abject poverty, there was just light, just existing. Some kind of balance, even if the scales were tipping. Even though it was raining.

And at the centre of it all, like a beacon, the tall, ancient spires of what she had only ever known as the Imperial Palace. The Jedi Temple, before it had become a tomb. A burned out husk. A monument to betrayal.

A beacon of light.

She could barely glimpse it, through the great shadows of the looming buildings above them all, the gloom of the artificial clouds, but she almost didn't need to. Like Han, a tiny spark in a sea of others, she could _feel_ it. And it felt –

– like the sun on her face.

She wasn't quite sure what to make of it. As a senator, in her youth (well – her actual youth, not this – this odd, forced facsimile) the spectre of the Temple had seemed tall and foreboding. Looking at it for too long had always made her nauseous. But that was a memory from a life that hadn't happened yet, and this – this was something different.

She swallowed, finally catching sight of Han in the flesh, the deep leather of his jacket, soaked through with rain, appearing from out of the crowd.

Something different. Something worth saving.

“How are we doing?” he asked, ducking into the alley, empty-handed and that was probably a good thing.

“Same as usual,” she replied. Luke stirred beside her but still didn't wake, a dimmer, strung-out spark. He hurt to touch, though something in her chest pulled guiltily as her mind retreated. She wanted him to wake up. Wanted him to see what she saw, feel what she felt. Wanted to know she wasn't imagining it.

“That bad, huh.” Han's mouth tugged into a grimace. “Well, got some good news and bad news.”

“Bad news first,” she demanded. Always.

“The hairpiece and the jewelry you gave me didn't fetch as much as I thought.” His eyes met hers in silent apology, silent guilt, though none of it – _none of it_ – was his fault. “Guess they're not really antiques, yet. Not sure I can get us somewhere other than the ground to sleep tonight if you also want some way to get around, but we might not starve to death at least.” _Before you kill us all anyway_ , but he was kind enough not to say it.

“That's not so bad,” she said, half gentle, more grateful than she felt the need to articulate. “What's the good news?”

His gaze turned dry. “Think you might not have to go as far as you think to get the information you're looking for. Least if it's what I _think_ you're looking for.”

“Show me,” she said, heart quickening, but he held up a hand to placate before she could drag Luke with her out of the alley. He unearthed a rag from his sleeve, dampened with rain. She stopped and held still, begrudgingly, as he gently rubbed away the blood crusted under her nose.

“You want to look scary down in these parts,” he said quietly, moving to dab at some that had dried across her upper lip, “but not that scary.”

 _Maybe I do_ , she had half a thought to say, but held her tongue. Watched the flecks of hazel in his eyes catch the cold light as he moved onto Luke, still held up against her, the fabric of his tunic clenched in her white-knuckled grasp. Her brother was still fish-belly white, but even she had to admit that without the blood crusted across the lower half of his face, he looked a few steps farther away from death. The sour tang of fear at the back of her throat that she'd been determinedly ignoring grew less. There had been something about the pallor of his face, the slackness of his jaw, his startling youth, that had brought old fears from their days fighting the Empire to the forefront of her thoughts. Old fears. That the family she'd made would be blown from the sky like the one she'd been born into. Adopted into. _Whatever_. But he looked a little more alive now, and even as Han's hands wiped the last of the blood from his chin, his eyes cracked open, blue and bloodshot against the sullen grey around them.

She expected – well, silence, and so reached out in the only other way she knew how, expecting him to slot right back into where he belonged at the back of her mind. And for a moment, it all seemed right. In the next, she fought against herself to keep physical hold of him, sank with him to the ground, hands twisted in his tunic, even as her mental reach recoiled, the connection between them broiling, mangled, smoke and flame, dry with heat, like sticking your hand into an open wound, _but it wasn't an open wound, it was his mind_ –

He couldn't even scream, she thought blankly, throat on fire where she'd strangled her own shout of alarm, sinuses burning once more, the Force a twisted, mangled thing between them, pain flooding the connection they shared until she ripped herself free of it, until she was left bereft, alone. But no longer set aflame, though she wasn't sure, for a moment, if the relief she felt was worth it. There was roaring in her ears, and then ringing, and then only Han, crouched once again beside them, face twisted in panic, mouth running like it always did when he was scared out of his mind. His hand was cool against the back of her neck.

“ – _karking Sith hell_ – ”

“Shh,” she said, water soaking into the knees of her trousers yet again. “It's okay. We're okay.” Luke breathed raggedly against her. She sensed confusion in the Force, at the periphery where they met, pain like a scouring heat, terror where his heart pounded against her own, but she didn't dare inch any closer, though she lifted a hand to his hair. _Retreat_ , she begged in his direction, from the safety of her own head. _Retreat from it_. Because somehow it was the Force, she realized, sick irony pooling in her gut, guilt like ice. The Force that had burnt him out like a husk. The holocron throbbed terribly in the pocket of her jacket, where she'd taken it from Han earlier. Nausea blossomed in her throat.

 _I'm sorry_ , she didn't say, the words sticking in her throat, and for a moment she almost understood.

“Ah, kid,” Han muttered, forehead creased in sympathy, worry making his eyes dark. His panic had tapered off but it lurked at the edges of him, anxiety thrumming in the air between them all. He placed the bloodied rag back under Luke's nose and pressed it there until Luke's own shaking hand reached up to hold it, the blood that still leaked out around it dark and slick in the gloom. Leia felt her own sinuses ache in sympathy.

Han's eyes met her own. “What the hell is this?” he asked lowly.

“I don't know,” she insisted, gut twisting.

“ _That's not_ – ” He looked at her incredulously, rocking back on his heels. Shook his head. Swallowed, once, and whatever he might have said was swallowed back as well. “Well.” His face gentled with effort. “How do we all feel about standing?”

In the end, there really wasn't much choice. The longer they stayed in one place, the more likely it was they would attract attention. Already it was possible they'd been made for an easy mark, the three of them half-collapsed in an alley, clearly not locals. Unavoidably suspicious, when that was the last thing they could afford to be. So she gathered her thoughts underneath her, watched Han's face set grimly, felt Luke tense underneath her white-knuckled grip, and they staggered all together as discreetly as possible out from the shadows.

Rain spat at her forehead, sharp and cold, and the crowd pressed at her senses, the ebb and flow loud and bright. She lifted the hood of Luke's robe over his head for him, thinking it might help shield him from it, even a little. She had only the distant, empty, aching sense of him to go by, and the help she gave was fumbling when it should have been exact. When she should have known exactly what was wrong, known exactly what to do. Known exactly what he was feeling. But she was shut out, by her own doing. She had quarantined herself away. Left him to burn alone. But that wasn't quite right, the more pragmatic part of herself insisted, probably correctly. She'd hurt them both, when she'd tried to reach out. There was nothing in the Force that would help. All she had to offer were her hands.

Once upon a time, they'd been enough. They would do for now. She grasped him tighter around the elbow and walked on, stray hairs and a glare that would intimidate a Wookie plastered to her face by the rain, a step behind Han. No one got in their way, despite the crowd.

“Here,” Han said, finally, ushering them to the side of the throng, into a gap between the makeshift, ramshackle stalls of questionable goods that lined the metal streets. The upper levels loomed above them. She caught the sound of rain pinging tinnily off of rusted roofs and awnings, under the hum of sentient voices, the buzz and crackle of a nearby –

– hologram.

“News broadcast,” Han said, pointing up and to their left, where a disconcertingly familiar news broadcaster's face shone blue and fuzzy on a raised holoscreen, far above the crowd, pressed in between colourful advertisements plastered to the sides of buildings. “Just wait a moment, it's cycling through.”

It was too loud to catch the Rhodian broadcaster's words, but her eyes narrowed on the trailing text at the bottom, heart beating loudly in her throat. A flash of planet in the background, unidentifiable, and then –

– Anakin Skywalker's crystal gaze, boring into her own from a hundred meters up, blue and flickering, as the broadcaster nonchalantly announced his return from Cato Neimoidia.

“He's on planet,” she breathed, vindication settling like poison in her gut. She'd been right. She'd gotten them to the right place, the right time, the right moment. Luke sagged almost imperceptibly against her, but she barely noticed. Her gaze was fixed far above them all. “He's here.”

“Leia – ” Han started, and she might have braced herself for another argument, another cycling, circuitous disagreement, but the past and the future felt tangible for the first time since they'd arrived, justice almost solid in her grasp, and she was transfixed.

So transfixed that she didn't notice the unfamiliar hand that darted in beside her, the elbow that was knocked into her face. She toppled backwards with a shout, brought Luke flailing down with her, watched as Han was knocked aside too, an unfamiliar blaster catching him in the jaw, and the air was twisting in warning, danger, _too late_ –

She slapped her free hand to her side, felt belatedly for the bulky shape of the holocron, its slickly reassuring presence –

 

Gone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnnnd finally we get to the time travel part of this time travel tale. And you know what they say - it never rains but it pours. Actually, I had a fairly difficult time figuring out if Coruscant's automatic weather even bothered to have rain (....if all my weather was automatic you can bet I'd keep it sunny and mild for like, 97% of the year, but, okay) but I needed it. For THEMATIC REASONS. So, guess what, it rains on Coruscant now, even if it didn't before. Maybe their weather machine's broken. I don't know.
> 
> Anyways, thank you so much for reading! Please do let me know what you thought! I love all your lovely comments and insights, and I especially love speculation. You never know what you're gonna guess right. ;)
> 
> Sunny days are on the way,
> 
> \- W


	5. v.

 

“We don't need it,” Leia insisted, not for the last time. Not for the first, either. Her legs banged against the side of the metal building they were perched on top of, CoCo Town sprawling underneath. The sound echoed tinnily. “We're not going home.”

“Don't count your mynock eggs before they've hatched,” Han muttered, but it was delivered without heat. He peered downward, eyes squinted against the glare of the late afternoon sun that had finally decided to make an appearance. It was sitting low in the sky, a sliver of orange light in the distance, bracketed by gloom. The air was still cool and damp, most of the sky still dark and thick with clouds, but the rain had stopped spitting down, at least. “Even if we're not going home, that thing is still bad news, right? Especially in the wrong hands. Where'd you even get it from in the first place?”

She glanced over to Luke, who'd stumbled up the rusted emergency escape with them at Han's urging with little argument, but he offered no explanation. His gaze, she realized, wasn't fixed down into the crowd, but across the expanse of the district underneath them. On the spire of the Jedi Temple, rising like a beacon, the sun behind it. She swallowed and looked away, reluctant to push.

“I don't know,” she told Han, mouth flattening at the look he threw her, equal parts worry and frustration. “He's always just – had it.”

“Not all that helpful, your worship.” He sighed, swinging his legs up and standing, the song of forcefully impacted metal filling her ears. “If you're gonna wipe us all off the face of the universe, I'd like to know we didn't send it spiralling into a new kind of disaster before we leave.”

Which was a fair point, for once. Maybe.

“Fine,” she muttered, conceding. “Luke – ”

He turned to look at her, sun catching in his hair.

“The holocron,” she said. “Is it – ” _Dangerous_? Of course it was. An idiot could have told anyone that much. “Is it like Han says? Bad news in the wrong hands? Where did it come from?” _How badly do we need to find it?_

_What will the consequences be if we don't?_

Though it begrudged her to admit, Han was probably right. They'd come here to fix things, not make them worse. She knew what the holocron was, had a – a vague idea of what it could do, but beyond that – she wasn't sure what damage it could cause. What it might be used for, by someone who did. She met his eyes, pleading in a way that no one else would have caught, though she wrapped the Force closer to herself, stamped down on her instinctive reach.

_What do I do?_

But he didn't answer. Only looked at her with a kind of vacancy that she was afraid to investigate. The Temple was pulling his attention, she could see it in the miniscule twitch of his fingers, the way his head was tilted towards her only reluctantly.

Han scoffed, though again it wasn't derisive. A mask to shove his panic behind. “Don't think there's anybody home, Leia.”

“Don't talk about him like that, he's right here,” she snapped half-heartedly. “It's not his fault.”

“No,” he said, gently. “It's really not.”

“What, then? You think it's mine?”

“No!” 

She stood, fuming, throat tight, not quite sure why she was suddenly so furious.

“Then whose?” she demanded.

He moved closer and grasped her upper arms, firmly but not painfully. “Hey,” he said, mouth twisted in chagrin. “I didn't mean it like that. It's just – complicated. Isn't it?”

“ _No_ ,” she hissed, but she didn't believe it. “It's not complicated at all.”

There was doubt in his eyes, a fear that ran deep and dark. “I don't wanna fight,” he said, dodging.

“That's always been your problem,” she said, before she could stop herself. “But there's nowhere to run here, Han. You're stuck with us.”

She'd hurt him, but he didn't move. She _hated_ –

“Hey, I _chose_ to be here,” he said, jaw clenching. “So maybe you're the one that's stuck with me.”

“ _Fine_ ,” she snapped. “We're all stuck here with each other, until we – until we do what we came here to do, so – ”

Until they did what they'd come here to do, but that plan had just been derailed _spectacularly_ and she so badly wanted that fact alone to be the reason _–_

“So,” he interrupted, still holding fast to her arms, gazing at her intently. “Let's not waste time arguing.”

Anger bubbled up her throat, but something in his eyes made it waver, made it retreat back into the heart of her where it lived.

“Alright,” she said, lower lip trembling. Force help her, she was tired.

“Alright.” He let go of her, and the sudden absence of warmth was somehow startling.

“It's not his fault.”

“I know.”

She took a breath. Gritted her teeth. “I think,” she said. Ground her jaw together in reluctance. Han looked at her in poorly disguised sympathy and that only made it worse. “It is dangerous. The holocron.” Sometimes all you could do was admit defeat. “Wherever Luke got it from, I don't think it was ever on Coruscant before. Whoever took it clearly knew what it was. Or at least knew it was important. They didn't try to take our credits, they didn't take Luke's lightsaber.” She sighed. “We should try to get it back. Before –”

“I got it.”

“ _Without_ drawing attention to ourselves.”

He raised his hands to his chest, genuinely offended. “Hey, don't you know who you're talking to?”

She glared at him in exasperation that was fonder than she cared to admit. “I know _exactly_ who I'm talking to.”

Han scrubbed a hand down his face in a kind of capitulation.

“Alright,” he muttered. “So we come up with a plan. A _discreet_ plan to get the scary glowing triangle back. And you know what every good plan needs?”

“What would that be?”

“Breakfast.”

“We're more than halfway through the day cycle, Han. It's nearly evening.”

He glanced at her, perfectly serious.

“First meal of the day, Princess. First meal in a couple decades, actually. _Breakfast_.”

She shook her head. “You're impossible.”

He ignored her, already heading for the emergency route they'd scrambled up together. “And I know just the place.”

He disappeared down the rickety metal stairs without her, though she had a feeling he'd be waiting just below, ready to lend a hand without looking like he was. She swallowed back another sigh and gritted her teeth, fingers itching for the hilt of her blaster. That, at least, had been left on her person. At the end of the day, it was more important than the holocron. No matter what she said out loud. She couldn't allow herself to get too distracted. To unravel too far. The past wasn't a sanctuary.

If everything went according to plan, it would be their tomb.

And until then –

She glanced toward her brother, gaze still fixed to the horizon. Wondered if in the meantime it was only a very special kind of hell.

 

#

 

“Han,” she muttered, leaning in over a booth table that was coated in what looked like several years' worth of grease, “ _what is this place_?”

The synthleather of the diner bench squeaked underneath her and she winced. Pressed up beside her on the inside of the booth, Luke shifted, though his eyes remained closed. He'd fallen asleep almost as soon as the three of them had sat down. She'd had to snag the back of his robe to keep him from face-planting into the table grease.

Han looked at her, cagey, from across. He was a terrible liar.

“Okay, so it's not exactly five-star dining, but in case you haven't noticed we've only got about five credits to our name, so –”

“I know you better than that,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice level. The diner Han had lead them to, though the atmosphere was disarmingly welcoming, was full of what looked like decidedly unsavoury characters, and they drew enough attention all by themselves. “Why here?”

Han took a sip of what she hoped was water out of a cup that looked only half-heartedly washed, stalling. It didn't seem to bother him.

“I mean it about the price range,” he said finally, matching her in expression and tone. “But places like this – I grew up in and around them. All sorts of people move through 'em. Even if we don't find the guy who swiped the –” He broke off, mindful of the sentients surrounding them. Even with the din and clatter of the dinner rush, you could never be too careful. “Look. We stick around a place like this long enough, maybe come back a couple times, establish a presence, we're bound to catch wind of something. Trust me.”

 _I do_ , she wanted to say, but he already knew. She took a tentative sip of her own cup of tea instead. She'd never been much of a tea drinker, preferred caf for the simple fact that it was more efficient at waking her up, but she'd caught sight of an Alderaanian blend on the menu, for a moment taken aback at the reasonable price. But of course the herbs and spices that were native to the planet weren't so rare yet. It tasted like home.

“That's your plan?” she said eventually, placing the cup down. “Wait and listen? It could have been smuggled halfway across the galaxy by now.” It hadn't been. She knew, somehow. If it was making its way into the wrong hands, then there were no better hands than the ones at the heart of the Galactic Senate. Still, though.

“Wait and listen and lurk,” he said, ignoring her skepticism. “We do some recon of our own too, but I'm telling you, our best bet is gonna be in a place just like this.”

He waited for her approval.

“And if that doesn't work,” he added when it never came, face falling imperceptibly. “Then we scrounge together some more credits and hire a bounty hunter.”

“Alright,” she agreed, comforted slightly by the possibility of contingency. One plan was never enough. Not where they were concerned, at least.

“ _Alright_?”

She glared at him, exasperated.

“You're the expert,” she said, trying to bite back the edge in her voice so it would sound like the compliment she meant it to. “I admit, I'm a little out of my depth here. So, thank you.”

“Well, don't thank me yet,” he said, but he settled back against the bench, seemingly appeased. “Leia,” he said, after a moment. She pressed her lips together. _Apparently not_. “It's just – ”

“I know what you're going to say,” she said, taking another sip of tea. “I thought you didn't want to argue.”

“ _I don't_. It's just, I've been thinking –” He stopped, and she caught a flicker of expectation, though she didn't take the bait. He swallowed, eyes trailing to the plexiglass, coated in finger prints. The thrum of life just outside, moving en masse through the grey. It was getting to be night, and the lights ubiquitous to the underworld were slowly flickering to life, red and orange and pink, flashes of neon violet that interrupted the gloom with promise. “And I know I keep asking, and I'm sorry, but are you – are you really sure you're doing the right thing here?”

“I don't want to talk about this,” she said in a rasp, stomach churning. “We've been over it a hundred times already, Han. The only thing that's changed is the missing holocron, and once we find that –”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” But his eyes stayed dark. “But we've been here a day now, seen the sights from above, from below, and – and I gotta tell you, your worship, things don't look all that different to me.”

“Don't look different?” She reigned in her voice with difficulty. She was being uncharitable. Han might have grown up under the Empire, just like they all had, but he didn't have the Force. He couldn't see the things she could, couldn't feel all the ways in which he was wrong. “Han – ”

“I don't mean it quite like that, I just – ” He pressed his lips together, thinking. Drummed his fingers against the table, once, twice. “What happened to Coruscant, what happened to the galaxy, it didn't just happen overnight. I mean, okay, maybe some parts did, but –”

“What are you getting at?”

“I just – ” He finally steeled himself enough to look straight at her. “You know the Empire doesn't start and end with Palpatine. I'm not even a politician and I could tell you that, and _you're_ the best politician I've ever met.”

Her mouth tightened. She avoided his gaze, finger tracing shapes and lines in the grease covering the table.

“All this suffering.” He wouldn't look away from her. His eyes bored into her forehead, pleading. “And for what? This might not change anything.”

Now she looked up. “You don't think preventing the rise of a dictator and his pet Sith Lord is going to _change anything_?”

“I think,” he said, voice low, insistent, “that the wheels that keep the Empire turning are already in motion, and that all that's gonna happen when you wipe old crinkle-face and his asthmatic robot off the map before their time is that the galaxy is gonna lose the two things that helped hold that evil back!”

“Held it back and then _set it loose again_ ,” she hissed in return, pressure building behind her eyes. “I told you. We are part of a cycle of destruction and failure, and the only way to end it is to stop it from happening in the first place!” She took a shuddering breath and continued in what had less potential to become a shout. “Without the Jedi, without the Sith, without the Skywalkers, all of this is just politics. Ordinary, _human_ evil. So maybe the Empire still rises, in some form or another. People can beat that. Democracy is something people will fight for, liberty is something people will fight for, but – but against all of it? Against that existential evil? Against the Force?” She shook her head. “They're no match for it, Han. I'm saving them from it, the best way I know how.”

“This isn't you at your best.” His face was set in a scowl, but his eyes were dark with a kind of pain that she couldn't, _wouldn't_ , touch. “And if you were at your best, you'd be able to tell that. You didn't plan any of this out, you didn't think any of it through, you just acted on instinct, and you don't – you don't do that, Leia! You always have a plan, you're always three steps ahead of everybody and everything, and you always think things through!” He swallowed harshly. Realizing, perhaps, that what he was saying wasn't necessarily true. In her youth – well. The Death Star came to mind. But he pressed forward. “And you didn't this time, because I think you knew that if you did you'd never be able to go through with it. But now you're here, you did it, we're trapped, and you don't feel like you have any other options, even though we both know that this is _insane_.”

For a moment her fury was so great she thought she might choke on it. The plastisteel tea cup shook under her hands, where her fingertips pressed white against its edges. Against her, Luke flinched but didn't wake.

“Nerf steak stew,” the hulking besalisk who'd welcomed them earlier interrupted. The bowl was set down gently, belying his stature and booming voice. He placed a steaming cup of hot chocolate closer to her brother with one of his other hands. “And two spoons.”

He drew back, face drawing into a frown.

“Trouble in paradise?” he questioned. Underneath the table, Leia kicked at Han's shin before he could answer. He bit his tongue around a reply that would have been too glib, too inviting.

“No,” she said, voice alarmingly steady. She was a diplomat, even against her nature. She knew how to smooth over a situation. Knew how to deflect. “Everything's fine. Thank you.”

His face remained a little too skeptical for her liking, but he didn't pry. She felt a flash of gratitude, though it was tempered with suspicion. They could have easily been served by the serving droids she'd seen ambling around. That they'd been served in person, seemingly deliberately, sat uneasy in her gut.

“Well, enjoy,” he said. “Let me know if there's anything else I can get you.”

She smiled tightly and he left.

“I don't want to argue,” Han reiterated, once his footsteps had faded into the surrounding din. He picked up one of the spoons, wiped it nonchalantly with the hem of his shirt. “But I can't let this go, Leia. I told you that when I said I was coming along.”

“I know.” She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “Let's just – put it away for now, alright?” They were good at that, at least. Compartmentalizing. Had to be, just because of the way they were. Too similar, too different, too – something. Their relationship was a constant press and pull, something that had never quite managed to settle. They loved each other, but it was the kind of love that needed its boundaries tested, whenever it was left too still, whenever they stopped moving for too long. They loved each other, but they didn't always get along. They could love each other still, even when they weren't getting along. In a way it was almost a skill.

Han settled. “Sure.”

A practiced skill.

He placed the other spoon in her hand. The steam from the stew warmed her face, and the smell was faintly appetizing, though she couldn't tell if she was hungry. It was – guilt, coating the inside of her mouth, down her throat, where it curdled in her stomach. Where it ate away at her like an acid, but she wasn't sure what to do with it, wasn't sure about anything except that she didn't want it, didn't need it, she'd weighed the scales and made her choice –

“Stop dwelling,” he said. “We paid good credits for this stew.”

She smiled faintly. “No we didn't.”

“No, we didn't.”

But the flavour was good nonetheless, and the warmth felt nice against the lingering chill they were all coated in. She'd always enjoyed the intimacy of sharing a meal. On Alderaan, there had been all kinds of intricacies and meanings woven into the etiquette surrounding dinner, and though in a formal sense she'd always bristled at the rules and implications, at how easy it was to offend someone inadvertently, privately she'd grown to appreciate the feeling of ritual. Even against the backdrop of a crowded, greasy diner, decades removed from her life, it still meant something.

“You think it's worth it to wake him?” Han shifted his gaze to her brother, who'd stayed dead to the world throughout the entire meal and the excitement before it.

It might have been worth it. She'd thought the drink at least might be marginally tempting, if arguably nutritious, but the other part of her wavered. His face was still bloodless, brow creased in pain, her sense of him tangled up and burnt around the edges. But she was helpless to do anything about it, and in a way that was worse.

“I think sleep might be the thing he needs most of all, right now,” she said. “I really don't know, Han.” Admitting defeat, again and again. Soured with worry, all twisted up and tangled at the back of her throat. “I'm not sure what's wrong.”

Another unforeseen problem, another thing stacked against them. Something else, to add to the pile of things that she was arguably at fault for. It kept growing.

“Well, we'll figure it out.” A useless platitude, but her heart warmed at it anyway. “Until then, all we have to do is stay afloat. Stick to the plan. Tomorrow'll be better.”

 _The plan_. Frustratingly vague, but she supposed it had to be. They were working together towards incompatible goals.

“Until then,” she said, draining the last of her tea. The leaves at the bottom told her nothing good, but her parents hadn't raised her to be suspicious.

After that, they didn't linger. Han tipped generously as they left, presumably with some ulterior motive in mind, but possibly because he'd genuinely enjoyed himself. She supposed for a run-down diner, it hadn't been all that bad. The chill of the night air was bracing, especially in comparison to the crowded warmth they'd been surrounded by for hours. She huddled down into her jacket as they exited, the hum of neon lights and voices filling her ears, the Force pressing softly against them. Coruscant changed at night.

But the danger was nothing compared to what they'd all lived through, and Han knew his way around the city's less savoury parts. She and Luke stumbled alongside him, pressed close to the sides of buildings and each other, keeping from the light for blocks and blocks, until he ducked sideways into an alley.

“This one,” he said, cutting through the darkness. They'd certainly passed a few on their way, but apparently this one was somehow better. “Out of the way, but not too out of the way,” he explained. 

They settled three across under the cover of a rusted window awning, behind the hulking silhouette of a residential garbage compactor. The irony wasn't necessarily lost on her. Han had made a face as they'd settled, dim, washed-out light from the street beyond them throwing his face into red and purple. He shifted, crossing his arms against his chest in an effort conserve heat. The ground was cold, even if the building radiated a little warmth, even with the three of them pressed together into a corner.

“You're alive right now,” she mumbled into his shoulder, not quite ready for sleep. Longing, probably naively, for some conversation that wouldn't spiral into argument. “Past you, I mean.”

“Yeah,” he said, after a moment. “On Corellia.”

The rain had stopped, but remnants of it from earlier trickled down the pipes hanging above them. A puddle was collecting in small drips at her feet, encroaching slowly on the space they'd claimed. She waited a moment, expecting some glib comment about avoiding the place so he didn't tear the universe apart by accidentally meeting himself, but it never came. She supposed it was less funny, in the context of actually trying to tear the universe apart.

“Do you remember it?” she asked. “The Clone War.”

“Wasn't exactly glued to the holonet at the time.” His voice was always so dry, when he talked about his past. And he didn't, very often, probably with good reason. Maybe she was courting argument after all. It was just –

“You remember it, though.” She shifted, cheek digging into the bony part of his shoulder, on her other side Luke's fingers tangled in her own. “What the galaxy was like. Before.”

She wasn't sure what she was expecting him to say. Her mind was hazy with exhaustion, the Force pressing up against her, bright and different, the edges of it feeling burnt, the shadows it cast thick and endless. This world felt different. The past felt different.

“Honestly?” Han's voice was close to slurred, fuzzy with sleep. “It all felt pretty much the same from day one, princess. 'Til I ran into you.”

She thought he might have more to say, but only silence followed. He'd fallen asleep.

She was tired too – the kind of exhausted that settled into your bones, made your joints ache, your vision blurred – but she didn't close her eyes. Only sat very, very still, listening to the leftover rain drop to the metal ground, the softness of her family's sleeping breaths, for a very long time. Thinking.

She wasn't sure what the morning would bring.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I call this chapter 'Murder Squad Does Brunch', even though literally most of the words in that sentence are technically inaccurate. 
> 
> Thinking some more familiar faces are about to show up in these parts, sooner than you might think, so thanks for putting up with all the exposition ;) In the meantime, thank you so much for reading, and I'd love to know what you thought!
> 
> \- W


	6. vi.

There was the sound of rain dripping in her ears, but none that touched her skin. The world was a blurred-out wash of white and metal, hazy, sharp at the place where her forearm met her elbow, an absence, the air spinning above her and below her where there was only vast, unknowable emptiness, reaching upwards to swallow her. Harsh breathing filled the space around her, not her own (none of this was her own, none of it was hers, she didn't belong here, she hadn't _been_ here _let me out let me go_ ) and the sound filled her with an empty kind of terror that fragmented in her chest and was swept aside by despair. There was no escaping the truth. Nowhere to run. Only ( _father, please_ ) what she knew, and it was impossible, unthinkable, unbearable, and that dark figure loomed, breaths echoing –

 

She let go.

#

 

Leia woke with a gasp, metal coating the back of her throat, head spinning. Blue flashed in the corner of her eye, the cold light of morning creeping between the gaps of Coruscant's towering heights to encroach on their dark, safe corner. Luke's hand was clenched in her own white-knuckled grasp. Heart pounding sickly in her throat, she blinked the grit from her eyes and tried to forget the sensation of falling. ( _It's not a fall when you_ jump – )

Just a dream.

Her brother was awake too, though only just. Eyes that were bloodshot and blue in the gloom of early morning met her own, and though he'd been unable to escape the clench of her grasp, he'd backed away as far as he could, into the corner of the alleyway. His expression was hair-raisingly blank, but the air was soaked in what felt like panic. Her half-awake brain was still sluggish, and she only made the connection when his nose began to seep a familiar red, slick and black in the absence of light. She dropped his hand like it burned. Withdrew as best she knew how into the safety of her own mind, clamping down on her instinctive reach. It wasn't the first time one of their dreams had leaked across into the other's, though it wasn't something they ever talked about.

Her chest ached, though it wasn't even the first time it had hurt.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, in deference to Han, still snoring away at her other shoulder, her heart still thrumming in her chest. “I was asleep, I didn't mean to. I know it hurts.”

She expected the tense set of his shoulders to relax, but it didn't happen. He remained hunched over, cornered, though he wasn't trapped in any physical sense. She thought she understood. It was so hard to pull away. Even though they'd been separated physically for years and years, she'd grown used to just – knowing. Knowing that her brother was there, that he was alright, even when he forgot to comm, even when he missed her calls or was out of reach. But the space in the back of her head where he belonged ached like an abscess, empty. He was right in front of her but if she closed her eyes she wasn't sure she'd know and that was _wrong_ , somehow. Even though it burned them both, that connection was still instinct.

It still hurt to be without it. And to be without that connection and without the Force – well. She imagined it was like being stricken blind. Had the sudden thought that maybe she ought to be trying to get Han to talk to him, if only because he had a better point of reference. She had nothing.

She had nothing, but that didn't mean she wouldn't try. She pressed her lips together and reached out on impulse, snagged her hand in the ankle of his trousers, fingers twisting around the fabric, a woollen blend that was just shy of luxury, not quite soft enough to be truly comfortable. Slightly damp. His leg had caught the edge of a leftover puddle. _I'm here_ , she didn't say. But his shoulders edged down from his ears just slightly, and that was enough.

Her heart was still beating too fast, breaths slightly ragged. The dream that wasn't hers had left a sour, frantic taste in her mouth, and she wasn't sure what to make of it. Han shifted beside her, drool seeping from the corner of his mouth, on the cusp of waking. She met her brother's eyes. He had called to her, all those years ago. He had reached for her. But, in the moments before –

 _When you fell_ , she thought of saying, _did you know I would be there?_

His gaze turned wary, and she was glad to see it. Even in retreat from the Force, he could still read her face, and she far preferred deliberate reticence over the alarming vacancy of the past few days. But still –

“We don't have to talk about it,” she said instead, feeling like a coward. What must have been the Force shimmered almost tauntingly at the edges of her awareness, and she felt insecure without its touch, dangerously vulnerable, but his eyes and mouth were pinched in pain that he wouldn't articulate, and she didn't want to do anything that might make it worse. The fabric of his trousers scratched against her fingers. “We'll figure this out.”

And if they didn't – well. It wasn't like either of them were much longer for the galaxy anyway. Somehow the thought was less comforting than it had been.

“Are you alright?” she asked quietly instead, knowing it was likely a stupid question and asking it anyway. Knowing that the hesitant nod she received in reply was a lie, knowing she had no right to the stab of guilt and disappointment in the pit of her stomach. It might have been self-punishment, his silence. Some kind of twisted self-blame. Or maybe it was just that he couldn't find the words.

She thought it more likely that the words he felt he had to say were the same ones that he knew she couldn't bear to hear, but that thought, too, she stifled before it could settle. He had done what she'd asked. He'd done more than that. And the reason –

 _– she couldn't_.

And he knew. Even without the Force he knew, even mired in pain and exhaustion, he knew. His eyes were dark with it. Dark with guilt that she didn't know how to assuage. Didn't know if she could find it in herself to assuage, and maybe that was part of the problem.

“Ugh,” Han muttered beside her, shuddering awake at last, and she didn't have to. He blinked slowly, swallowing back a yawn, the routine familiar and not against the backdrop of the alleyway, his young and deceptively guileless face. He scrubbed the grit from his eyes with a thumb. “'Morning.”

“Good morning,” she said, the words scratching against her throat. She broke Luke's gaze. Wondered grimly if Han could tell they were keeping something from him. If he could, he was very charitably keeping it to himself. “Sleep well?”

“I hate to say it, but I've slept in worse places,” Han said, not especially bothered. “You?”

“We've slept in a lot of the same places,” she said dryly.

“True.” He grimaced in acknowledgement. “Luke?” The grimace deepened. He fished yesterday's rag from the sleeve of his jacket and handed it to her brother. “You know, I'm not even gonna bother asking you, you still look like shavit. You two alright?”

“As we can be,” she said, feeling the weight of the past settling onto her shoulders as the sun broke further. The previous day would have felt like a dream, if her own sleep had been bereft of nightmares. But it was all too real. And their job wasn't finished. There was a kind of urgency curdling her gut, a twinge at the back of her neck that she'd learned not to ignore, something that whispered _hurry, hurry_.

 _Don't lose it_ , she heard in the wind, but she didn't have time for voices, and so she ignored it.

“Don't worry,” she told Han, though he would. The sun caught blue at the edge of her sight. “Let's find that damned holocron.”

“On it,” he said, in his element despite himself. His teeth glinted in the watery sunlight, the small coin purse of credits he'd acquired jangling in his grasp as he shook it. “But first – breakfast.”

 

#

 

They passed three days doing it Han's way – settling into life in Coruscant's past as best they knew how, trying to make it seem as though they belonged. That was how you got people to talk, he told her, against the backdrop of the planet's endless, neon-soaked night, tucked away in what had become their alley. Blending in was the best you could hope to do, if you ever wanted to find out anything. It wasn't, she found herself thinking at one point, tracing a line with her finger on a greasy diner table, unlike the same kind of information fishing that often went on at political functions. The less noticeable you were, the more information found its way to your ears. That was just how it worked.

In that old life, so far away now, she'd rarely had the luxury of anonymity, especially once the truth of her parentage had come out, but here, she wasn't anybody yet. She wasn't a war hero, or a princess, or the daughter of a monster.

( _Not the mother of one, either_.)

It was an awful kind of freedom, in its way, though she found it difficult to relish. Her past – here, the future – loomed, their purpose greater and more pressing than any culture shock, than any moment she might have taken to bask in the sheer difference of their setting. She felt constantly unsettled. Watched. Felt eyes on the back of her neck even when they were alone in the alley, when there was nothing behind her but duracrete wall. Her wariness was catching, and she could tell Han was unsettled, too. Unsettled and deeply unhappy, though he was trying his best to keep his mouth shut about it. She was grateful, even if it left her guilty.

Unfortunately, it also left the two of them fairly bereft of safe conversation topics, and what they were left with was either stale, inconsequential –

(“How about this weather, huh,” he told her, straight-faced, the scheduled sunlight glinting off his hair.

“ _Shut up_ ,” she snarled uncharitably.)

– or combative.

The truth was she felt more sympathetic towards her brother every day. It was all too easy to slip into a pattern of silence. She'd underestimated the way that words could serve as an anchor, found herself circling unsavoury trains of thought that before she'd barely had time to examine as they waited. Lurked. She worried that Luke was drifting away, too, without it. Worried that he might become lost in his own head. It was difficult to tell how he was faring, though she suspected it was far from well. He seemed to sleep as poorly as any of them, remained listless and pale and quiet.

The fourth day, when she woke from another uneasy dream, he was warm to the touch and there was still no sign of the damned holocron.

“This isn't working,” she told Han flatly, as they ducked and dodged their way back into the centre of CoCo Town. There was no rain today, the sun bright and nearly violet in the early morning, but the air was chilled and metallic against her skin. Crisp and springlike, though nothing grew this far down. “We've learned plenty about the war,” and that, at least, was true – enough to fuel a Clone War historian's wet dream, but none of it was useful, none of it had anything to do with what they _needed_ , “but nothing about where the artefact went. It was worth a try,” she told him, still grateful, despite herself. “But I think it's time to try another option.”

His face soured, but he didn't disagree.

“We have been coming up dry,” he admitted. They rounded the corner to the same diner they'd stumbled into that first night – Dex's, she'd finally taken care to note, in the frigid daylight. “I guess that holocron might move along the market different than your average trinket. And – if we're trying to avoid attention –”

The rest went unspoken. Gossip, they'd been learning, ran freely at Dex's, about all sorts of matters, carefully curated by the diner's erstwhile proprietor. The besalisk's jovial nature was genuine, she thought, but it was also a tool. Information was just as much a currency within as a credit chip was. And the sorts of things they'd been hearing didn't bode well for their continued anonymity – whatever tear they'd created in space and time hadn't healed, and the Jedi had taken notice. An investigation was apparently ongoing. All of it was only a matter of time.

And time, ironically, was the one thing she felt sure they didn't have.

“You could try looking for it the other way again,” Han suggested carefully as they slipped inside, dodging the attention of any sentient being. “One more time.”

“No,” she said, voice turning sharp. Felt that same tug of urgency at the back of her mind, doubt burrowing into her chest. Paused. Han and Luke came to a slow halt with her. “Maybe.”

He was talking about looking for it with the Force. She'd tried it, briefly, that third day, when the idea had occurred to her. But it hadn't worked, not really. Not enough to tell her anything more than that it was still on the planet – she _thought_. She might have been a Jedi, but she had never delved into training the way Luke had always wanted her to. He'd taught her the basics, but she'd been – resistant. Afraid. And now –

She couldn't think about it. The Force came to her when she needed it, on the barest of instincts, and she could touch it, reach it – but when it came to actually using it in any kind of practical way, she found herself at something of a loss. She was out of her depth, and her brother was in no position to help. And, she thought, gritting her teeth, that kind of meditative search required a sort of calmness that she wasn't – especially predisposed to. Especially right now.

“One more shot,” she relented, bitterness souring her throat. She didn't really have anything to lose by doing it – only her pride. The truth was that it stung to be reminded of her failures in so many little ways. Every time she failed to touch the Force, every time it slipped from her grasp, every time she used it – _wrong_ , resentment and regret came to a simmer in her gut. She'd made the choice, long ago, not to follow the same path as her brother. As her father. If she was lacking in the tools she needed now, then there was no one to blame but herself, and she still wasn't convinced that her choice had been the wrong one. It was a dilemma that had kept her up at night, especially after Ben had been sent away. If she had made the decision to train properly, if she'd been in better command of her abilities herself, maybe she would have been able to understand him better. Help him, in a way that at the time she'd thought only Luke could.

But it was far too late for thoughts like that now. All she could do was use what little she had learned and trust that the rest would fall into place.

Still uneasy, they settled into a corner booth at the back of the diner, out of earshot and eyesight of most of the diner's other patrons. Waited, tense, until the pot of tea they ordered was set down in front of them. She poured herself a cup and let the steam waft under her nose. Ignored the twist of Han's face as he sipped at his own – he'd never cared much for it.

“C'mon, kid,” he said to Luke, seated beside him for once, abandoning his own cup to pour one for him. “Drink up. This pretentious leaf water's gotta be good for something.”

Luke, who she knew for a fact had grown up on varieties of tea that were far more flavourful than the leafy, herbal recipe Han had ordered blindly, blinked away his vacant expression long enough to look distinctly unimpressed.

“That's what you get for ordering the cheapest thing on the menu,” she said, hiding a smile. “You should have gone with the Alderaanian blend.”

Han scowled. “Everyone's a critic.”

Well. She couldn't exactly argue that point without proving him right. Instead, she closed her eyes and did her best to sink into the Force, steam warm under her nose, breaths rising and falling steadily. _In, out_. Just like Luke had taught her, all those years ago. The setting wasn't ideal, loud and crowded, full of people, but a Jedi could block those things out. Should have been able to, at least.

She could do it. She had to do it.

 _In, out_. _In, out_ , until the physical world melted away, all that noise and colour with it, until it was only her, set adrift in a sea of light and dark and shape and form.

This world was so bright, despite itself. And at the centre of it – it must have been the Jedi. She didn't understand what else it could be, that press of light and calm and purpose, a tangled current of a thousand things, so alive that it almost hurt. Her own galaxy was missing it, whatever it was. She dove into it, searching.

The light was not the only thing.

She could feel Luke, beside them but so far away, charred at the edges, a spark smothered under layers of thick, relentless guilt; the Temple, sharp and bright, beckoning; the press and roil of a million beings, not all of them with the Force, but all of them within it. Light and the dark. All that lived and all that did not. Death and decay that fed new life, even within the duracrete confines of the city, ancient and unyielding; sewers and gardens and aqueducts and ruins; people's homes and people's graves.

She could feel everything. Everything that was above – and everything that lurked underneath. There was a layer of oil, thin and cold and streaky, beneath it all. The light she felt was shot through with it, and she was reminded of the feeling of Ben in her womb, a beacon so bright that the shadows had seemed inconsequential. _Great light casts a great shadow_ , Luke had told her once. _It's nothing to be afraid of_. And maybe he was right. She should have been less afraid. But there was danger, too, she thought, in ignoring those shadows completely. In hoping you could live without ever having to look at them.

In hoping that, in your ignorance, they wouldn't just grow.

But it was that thin, slimy darkness that she had to follow, even though it turned her stomach, and so she did – dived after it clumsily, searching, following it like she might an unravelling thread, into the dark. It felt vast and old, but she wasn't looking for its source – only for something that existed within it. That pulse of familiar cold, that freezing song, as nauseating as it was appealing. She could admit that to herself, in this non-place. It was appealing. She'd never sought power as an end in itself, because she knew that it wasn't, but even she couldn't deny –

– there. Like she'd had to admit to herself that she wanted it in order to find it. She followed the thread, dove alongside it, the Force buffering and bucketing like a current of air. _Where are you,_ she thought. This was where she'd lost the thread, the last time. She wouldn't let it happen again. _Show me_.

Gleaming pillars, glinting in the sun. As familiar as breath, her youth crashing down on her, but there was so much less darkness – people walked and spoke and conversed without fear, and it had all been lost, stamped out, _forgotten_ –

Dragged down, deep, underneath those pillars into the looming dark. Dripping pipes and the stench of fear. _Where are you_ , she pressed. _Show me, show me_ –

The thread was plucked from her grasp and she was plunged into ice.

“ _It's here_ ,” she gasped, thrown back into herself. The material world felt dull and coarse. “It's still here. The Senate district.”

Han grasped her hand across the table, face wrinkled into a frown, tea forgotten. “You're cold. What –”

“I'm not the only one who knows it's here,” she said, heart pounding against her ribcage, feeling slimy, _watched_. “I think I – ran into something I shouldn't have, I think something knows we're here, I – ”

She cut herself off with a brutal swallow, Han's knuckles white around her hand. He opened his mouth to fill the sudden silence, but something in her face stopped him. The air was static, sharp and bright; they weren't alone here, though it wasn't the chilling darkness of whatever she'd just stumbled into – ( _she knew exactly what she'd stumbled into)_ – but the Force edged at her awareness, they were caught in that web of life and light, and against the distracting, burning feel of her brother there was something – _someone_ – else.

Her mouth went dry. Jedi. It couldn't be anything else.

“We have to leave,” she hissed, tugging at Han's hand, moving to stand, eyes combing the throng of regulars. “We have to leave _right now_.”

“But –”

“ _Now_ , laser brain!”

“Okay, okay,” he placated, releasing her hand to help Luke out of the booth. He reached into the credit purse and threw some down on the table to cover their drinks. “We'll get out of here. Move slow.”

Like they could move any other way, with the crowd so thick, with Luke vacant and stumbling, without raising suspicion, but she swallowed back a sharp retort and set off behind them, so tense she thought her bones might snap. She scanned the room as they weaved their way to the exit, through the throng of regulars, heart pounding. Classic jizz resonated warmly from a speaker somewhere, mixing with the smell of grease and the sound of dishes clanking, the din of the lunch rush, but it was perfectly ordinary. Nothing looked out of place, there was no one person that stood out, but she still felt – _something_ , some presence, near but not necessarily aware.

“Almost there,” Han muttered, and she wondered if he was only humouring her. The thought was accompanied by an almost absent-minded rush of familiar, misplaced fury that she set aside to ignore more concretely later. She didn't want lies, even if that made her a hypocrite. She was trying to protect them all from each other, from knowledge that would only hurt, the kind of truth that didn't matter, and maybe Han was doing the same, but it was different. She didn't want gentleness. She didn't deserve it. And what she wanted – what she wanted, she couldn't have.

All that she did have was this plan, and she was still being thwarted at every turn, and it should have been _easy,_ should have been –

Daylight hit her face as she followed Han and Luke through the entrance, and she prepared to breathe a sigh of relief and duck after them into the shadows –

– but it was some instinct, some remnant of those damned Skywalker genes that made her turn her head as she left, peering one last time into the crowd they'd escaped, and she caught a glimpse of the besalisk who owned the place, two of his arms clasped around the shoulders of a tall, robed figure. The back of her neck prickled.

“Leia,” Han said, confused and no longer trying to hide it. “You coming?”

She moved, but not before the robed stranger twisted in the besalisk's friendly grasp. She slipped after Han, cursing herself internally, but she wasn't fast enough, and she felt the weight of the stranger's attention in the Force, pulling at her curiously, washing over them all. She cursed out loud this time, hurrying them along, but Luke stumbled, head snapping up, nose crinkled in pain, and she knew he'd felt it too, in spite of everything. His eyes were momentarily clear, even if what she found in them ached.

“Don't reach back,” she snapped uncharitably, grabbing his other elbow, retreating clumsily from the Force as they ventured further from the diner. The past nipped at their heels. _Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi_ –

“I know,” she said, breath ragged in her throat, phantom smoke filling her nose as her brother reached in vain for the Force, wincing on his behalf when he gave up abruptly. The charred feeling lingered. “But we can't – ”

Han didn't slow down, but his jaw had tensed, knuckles white against Luke's upper arm. “Will somebody please tell me – _using their words and not whatever Force-forsaken mind reading you two always seem to forget I don't have_  – what exactly we're running from?”

“An old – friend,” she said, though it wasn't quite true. “But he can't help us here. No Jedi can. And no Jedi can know that we're here.”

“Thought we'd already established that it's a bit late for that.”

“You know what I mean. They can't find us, there's no way we could possibly explain it all.”

There was no way she would be able to carry out what she'd come here to do. They had to avoid getting tangled up in the events of the past as much as possible. The alternative - well. She didn't want to think about it.

“He didn't follow us,” Han said, steering them into another alley, where they ground to a inelegant, collective halt. How he kept track of where they were in relation to everywhere else was beyond her, but so far he seemed to have kept them from getting lost. It was so easy to spare him the credit, sometimes. But even she couldn't deny that for all the trouble he'd gotten them in over the years, he almost always succeeded in getting them out of it. That had to count for something. “Your old friend.”

She took a moment to catch her breath, letting go of Luke to bend over her knees. Her breath whistled in her lungs. Wisps of her hair were plastered to her forehead with sweat.

“No, he didn't,” she said. “But I couldn't say why.” She swallowed back a groan. “None of this is going according to plan.”

“Can't exactly say I'm disappointed, your worship.”

She rolled her eyes, not bothering to reply, the exchange so familiar by now that there wasn't any particular point. He could walk himself through the steps without her.

“But I found it,” she said, almost to herself. The Force twisted, but it didn't feel like a taunt. More like a kind of reassurance. “Sort of. Now all we have to do is track it down.”

Han looked at her curiously. “Can you do that?” He was tired enough that the skepticism he might have once tried to conceal leaked through. But at least that was real.

“You know,” she said, heart pounding in her chest. “I think I can, actually.”

 

#

 _Leia_.

 _You can't let him have it, Leia. You can't let him get his hands on it_.

 _Leia_. _**Leia**_.

She jolted awake, so poorly rested she felt almost ill. Or maybe that was the dread left sitting at the back of her mouth, sour. Sour and blue. Like the smell of the abandoned lift car they'd taken refuge in on their way to the Senate district.

“Another dream?” Han asked, face pinched with tiredness. Early morning gloom fell across his face in shafts of trickling light from the gaps in the lift's ceiling and threw it into grey, watery relief.

“I don't know,” she told him, not missing the uncomfortable twist of his lips. “I – I'm not sure.”

“I would ask what else it could be, but I'm not sure I want to know,” he muttered. Let out a huff of breath. He wouldn't meet her gaze, which either meant that he was trying to hide something, or that he didn't want her to know how worried he was. His hand was wrapped around Luke's ankle, where he was tucked into the lift's corner at Han's other side.

“What?” she asked, skin prickling.

Han pressed his lips together, reluctant. “'Been trying to rouse your brother for the past five minutes. He's breathing fine, but I can't wake him up.”

She swallowed back a stab of her own worry. A drop of water caught the end of her nose as she leaned over him, arms pressing into his chest for balance, investigating cautiously with the Force. She rested the back of her knuckles against her brother's cheek, watching his eyelids move in the watery light. Still warm. But the air was cool and damp around them, and she couldn't tell whether it was an unnatural heat or not.

“He's not getting any better, is he,” Han said.

“He tired himself out yesterday. He just needs some proper rest,” she said. The words tasted sour at the back of her throat. The truth loomed. “And once – once we get the holocron back – ”

She couldn't spit the rest out, but she didn't have to. _None of it will matter anyway_.

“You can't possibly mean that,” Han choked out, fingers tangling unconsciously in the fabric of Luke's trousers, in the edge of her sleeve. “I know you don't mean that.”

“I don't want to keep retreading this with you,” she whispered, eyes locked onto her brother's face, chest aching. It wasn't comfortable, hunched over Han's lap, her arm bent at an odd angle, but the warmth of him against her was reassuring. The steady beat of his heart. “You think I like any of this? You think it's easy for me? To see him hurting, to see – ”

 _To see you hurting_.

“And to know,” she said, the words scraping against her throat, “that the only thing I can do to make it stop is – ”

“The holocron” he said, half-pleading.“We could still go back.”

She retreated back to her spot on his other side, and her sleeve slipped from his grasp. Back aching, she sat and met his gaze, suddenly cold. Willing him to understand. The Force buzzed, omnipresent, blue, at the edges of herself.

“We can't. I have to fix everything, Han.”

He looked back at her, miserable, fingers still twisted around the fabric of Luke's trousers.

“I know. And I – I said I'd come with you. But I didn't make any promises about keeping my thoughts to myself.” He swallowed bitterly. “Feels like I've been looking after you two a long time. This doesn't feel – right. Sometimes I think I'm about to get my feet back under me, here, but then I stop to think about it all for a second, and – ”

“I'm sorry,” she said, voice soft. And she was. And she ached to take him in her arms, but it was a comfort that she didn't deserve. She stood instead, her chest tight, moved to wrench open the door to the lift car. Its controls were rusted and ancient, and the task had to be done by hand. She closed her eyes against the wrench and squeal of durasteel against durasteel, opened them again to inspect the greyish gloom that lurked beyond. Underneath the Senate district, there was very little except dust and dark, but it never hurt to be cautious. There was something –

“I'm not,” Han said, just as quiet. He didn't move from his spot on the ground. “Sorry. I'm not sorry for not wanting you to die.”

“I'm not asking you to be,” she snapped back, but it was more of a reflex than a genuine sentiment. She swallowed nervously, knuckles white against the frame of the door. There was nothing in front of them but a long, gloomy corridor. A stack of ancient shipping crates, what looked like kilometres of interconnected scaffolding, a vent to the world above –

“I'm tired of talking about this,” she breathed absently, eyes narrowing. If she let in that hurt completely, she'd never be able to shut it away enough to do what she had to. Against the tug of her heart, her eyes strained against the darkness. There was nothing _there_. “Your objection's been noted.”

 _Leia_.

“Thought you weren't a committee.” Petulant. Hurt buried underneath it, but she didn't have time for her own guilt. Force, she was married to a _child_ , with all the emotional complexity of a –

 _Leia_. _Hear me, Leia, look at me_ –

She blinked, breath catching in her throat. Blue shimmered, but it wasn't at the edges of her sight, it was right in front of her, frantic, shuddering, coalescing into a shape that dissolved in the instant that it finally materialized, and frustration that wasn't her own echoed through the Force, a familiar spark –

“Ahsoka?” she whispered into the empty corridor.

And as if in answer, a bundled up figure came bursting from the vent, moving too fast to see, a blurry, formless, colourless shape in the gloom surrounding them. It burst past her and the abandoned lift, ricocheting off the walls, the crates, into the scaffolding beyond, and at its heels –

A small, robed figure, sharp and spiny in the Force, her face bright with youth and achingly familiar, sprang from the same vent and darted after the shape in pursuit.

“Master, that guy is getting away!”

“I _know_ ,” an unfamiliar voice snapped, as the similarly robed figure it belonged to leapt down after her from the scaffolding and skidded to a halt. He burned like a sun, familiar and not, and Leia found herself as frozen as he seemed to be, caught in the trap of his gaze. His eyes were clear and blue. Just like her brother's. She thought she might be sick.

“Ahsoka,” he said, all Outer Rim and ill-refined. “Wait.”

Leia's hand itched for her blaster, but she knew the second she moved there would be a lightsaber at all of their throats. Blood pounded in her ears, the Force a flickering, uncertain shadow, Han frozen behind her.

There was a monster staring down at them, but he didn't know it yet.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (this isn't even that important, but after all these years I still cannot believe that canonically one of the most popular music genres in the Galactic Republic is called fucking jizz)
> 
> (star wars is a gift)
> 
> anywayy, finally, what y'all probably came here for in the first place - it only took me, what, six chapters? Oh gosh. And, on a side note -
> 
> FILONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
> 
> so, uh. Needless to say, I've had to do a bit of on the fly replotting in light of the latest Rebels (!!!!!!!). I guess I could have left everything as is, but, you know what they say - when life hands you a canon time travel mechanism, you have to...make...canon time travel lemonade. Or something. Anyways, probably some of it is gonna be a bit of a stretch, but I think I can make it work? (???) (???????)
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading, and please let me know what you thought! Character-wise, the OT is relatively new territory for me, so I'm always curious to know how things are working out for people. Obviously, at the end of the day, it's all interpretation, and it's all in good fun, but there's always a bit of a learning curve as well. And this whole thing (as good sequels should be) is a bit...weird and experimental for me, in some ways, so feedback along those lines is always very much appreciated. 
> 
> Best,
> 
> \- W


	7. vii.

“Master, the _guy_ – ”

“ – _isn't that important_ , we can catch him later.”

Ahsoka, unmistakeable despite her scrawny adolescence, made an unhappy face but darted back to – to –

Vader. _Vader's_ side, he was standing right in front of her, tall and looming, his face carved from stone, but there was no malice in the Force, no flicker of cold up the back of her spine, no echoing breaths, and she could take care of this right here, right now, if only her hand could move faster than his lightsaber, but –

“Master.” And Leia wanted to wince at the impudence, the barely-concealed skepticism, but Vader didn't move to strangle anyone, and no threats left his mouth. “It's not like we've never run into people living in abandoned lift cars before.”

To her surprise, he all but rolled his eyes and elbowed Ahsoka gently in the ribs. He looked more long-suffering than annoyed. “Look closer,” he urged. “What do you sense?”

“ _We're right here_ , for the record,” Han muttered from behind her, but he was ignored. Ahsoka leaned forward, and Leia felt her reach out cautiously in the Force, investigating. The markings on her forehead pulled into a frown.

“...The Force feels like the weird scary rip thing we found in the entertainment district.” Her hand went to her belt, hovering over her lightsaber. “Who are you?”

How in the nine hells was she supposed to answer that?

“None of your business, kid,” Han answered for her, smothering his palpable confusion with belligerence, and she rolled her eyes in frustration.

“ _Han_ ,” she muttered, but his protective scowl was burning into her back.

“Hey, we don't have to tell them anything, sweetheart.”

And the Force flared sharply as Ahsoka's hand moved more decisively towards her lightsaber, but Vader caught her wrist with his hand.

“Negotiation,” he muttered with emphasis. “Remember? That's what we're working on this week. Talk first, _then_ fight.”

“Master, you hate negotiating.”

“Snips.”

“'Do as you say, not as you do',” she quoted back at him, “ _okay_ – ”

“It's part of the curriculum,” he hissed. “We have to do it.”

“You hate the curriculum.”

“Yeah, but we still have to _follow it_. Don't you want to be a Knight someday?”

“Okay, okay.” Her hand left the saber hilt, but remained in the area. “Happy?”

Leia watched them warily, half in shock. The Vader she'd encountered as a child – the one that the Ahsoka she knew had all but dragged to her doorstep – had been cagier than this one. Sadder. Infinitely more unbalanced. She'd been so young, but she remembered what he'd felt like. A man on the edge of a cliff. And Vader himself – encountering him had always felt like running into a black hole. He sucked all the air from the room, all the light, burned with a cold, nauseating intensity, and she had never once taken a moment to think that he had ever been so young as this. As – irreverent as this.

“Go on,” he said to Ahsoka, quietly. _Teaching_ , Leia thought, mouth dry.“Give it a try.”

She sighed, but moved her hand away from her belt.

“I'm Padawan Ahsoka Tano, and this is my master, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker. We're not going to hurt you,” she said. “But you need to tell us who you are, and what you know about that weird rip thing.” Her gaze fixed on Han, eyes narrowing. “And you do actually _have_ to tell us, under Article 72 of the Military Creation Act that grants the Jedi Order special emergency powers and jurisdiction during wartime operations – ”

“Spare them the legalese, Snips.”

“Just because you didn't bother to read it doesn't mean it isn't relevant – ”

It was almost an excessive amount of banter, Leia noted absently, slightly horrified by their youth, though it wasn't unfamiliar to her. War made soldiers out of children. She knew that firsthand. And their excessive talking had given her at least a little time to strategize, though in her concealed panic she knew that they had very little recourse but some version of the truth, and that – that was _dangerous_.

Her blaster sat heavy in its hilt at her side.

Her moment would come. She would just have to wait until her success could be guaranteed. To make a move before then would be stupid. Suicide of an altogether different sort, and infinitely more useless.

“My name is Leia,” she said finally, watching their faces, keeping her own as impassive as possible. “My husband, Han Solo, and my brother, Luke are behind me.” She swallowed. “I can't – tell you where we're from. And I have no idea what 'rip' you're talking about.”

A bald-faced lie, but she had a talent for those.

“You're steeped in it,” Ahsoka said skeptically, stepping even closer. Vader's face narrowed in agreement. “The energy from it. The Force – ”

Leia fought a wince as Ahsoka's presence dived closer with more abandon, investigating. She felt sharp and young and bright, but dangerously incautious, and if she prodded too deeply –

She threw up her own defences with an internal sigh of resignation, throwing herself – well, not literally – in front of Luke before Ahsoka could venture too close. Even still, Ahsoka had edged too near to him, caught a whisper of his frayed, charred borders. Of Leia herself, whatever she felt like.

“Woah,” Ahsoka muttered, almost to herself, leaning in closer with the nonchalance of youth, ignoring the way Han's knuckles whitened protectively over Luke's ankle. “ _Burnout_.” Critically, though the word meant nothing to Leia. Her gaze met Leia's own, familiar blue, years removed. The air suddenly filled with tension. “Are you... Jedi?”

Vader approached, though he stayed behind Ahsoka, let her keep the lead. She was suddenly sickeningly glad that Luke's lightsaber was hidden where he was pressed against the corner of the lift car.

“What do you sense?” he asked to her back, keeping a careful eye on them. Leia had the distinct impression that he'd already judged them for himself, his own investigation more quick and subtle than his apprentice.

Ahsoka's mouth set firmly. “Not Jedi,” she determined. “But you have the Force.”

If Luke had been conscious, he likely would have taken great offense, and the absence of any objection tugged at her heart. But it was true that neither of them were Jedi like those that had come before them.

“Yes,” she said, because it was the simplest answer.

“And your purpose here?” Vader was frowning now, more stiff, more cautious. His attention in the Force didn't inspire the same kind of glacial fear his monstrous counterpart always had, but it shone with an intensity that was almost painful. “Ahsoka's right, your brother's burnt out. What happened?”

“Something was stolen from us. An artefact,” Leia said, the truth sitting sour in her gut, a more immediate fear climbing up her throat. “What do you mean, 'burnt out'?”

Vader stepped forward, frowning critically. She and Han both shifted protectively, but he didn't seem offended.

He looked to them. “The Force moves through us,” he said, a bit carefully, confusion edging into his voice. Expectation. He really had been a teacher, Leia found herself thinking, still half incredulous. _Not a half bad one_ ; the thought slipped through before she could clamp down on it. “We wield it. But we're only flesh and bone.” His face scrunched. “Well, that's – that's a bit debatable, actually, but I don't – anyway. Flesh and bone. Wield too much of it at once, and –”

He shrugged, gaze focusing once more on the prone form of her brother. His expression turned speculative.”Nothing good happens.” He shook his head. “I've never seen it this bad, though. Whatever he did, it must have been impressive.”

 _You have no idea_ , she could feel Han wanting to say, so she stepped backwards and preemptively kicked him in the shin in what she hoped was a discreet manner.

“Will he be alright?” she asked instead, doing her best to swallow back her desperation. It would do them no good.

A thin stream of stark daylight filtering down caught Vader's face, throwing half of it into shadow. He answered carefully.

“Eventually. If he's careful.”

Breath escaped her shakily, and she felt her hands clench into fists. _Eventually_. But there was uncertainty in his voice, wavering out into the Force –

“He'll be fine,” Ahsoka interjected, projecting far more reassurance than her master. Her mouth was twisted in sympathy. “Usually it just takes time.” Something in her voice suggested an uncomfortable familiarity with the subject, but Leia didn't know enough to judge whether it came on behalf of Ahsoka or her experience with Vader. “The Force isn't supposed to hurt,” she said, quietly, eyes fixed to Luke's face. The wrongness of him in the Force was palpable, even with Leia doing her best to shield them all. “I'm sorry.”

Vader's face was more impenetrable, though even he seemed troubled. But his jaw tightened.

“The artefact,” he pressed. “What's so important about it?”

She couldn't escape the trap of his gaze. Even without the Force to coerce, he was almost impossible to say no to. It would have been like trying to deny the sun.

“It's a holocron,” she admitted, not without some reluctance. It caught on the edges of her teeth. “The knowledge contained within it is dangerous. It can't fall into the wrong hands.” She didn't try to pull away from his gaze. Let him fill in the gaps himself.

“The Sith lord,” he said, frowning, suspicion crawling across his face like a shadow. She froze.“You know about them.” The Force pressed against her, not enough to hurt. Just enough to alarm. “Do you know who they are?”

“ _No_ ,” she lied, cold climbing up her throat, latent horror. _They'd known_. How could they have known? How had they missed it, when what they'd been looking for was right in front of them, when he'd been right in front of them the entire time, how –

She could fall down that hole later.

“I don't know their identity,” she said, lying again. “I'm as in the dark as you. But they can't be allowed the knowledge in the holocron. It would put the galaxy in terrible danger.” _Even greater danger than it's already in_. “Please. I can't tell you any more.”

His eyes narrowed. “And why's that?”

She pressed her lips together in mutinous silence.

He scoffed, shaking his head. “Look, it's pretty obvious that you three don't belong here. If what you're saying is true, then this is a matter for the Jedi Council, and I can assure you,” his expression went dry, lips twisting in what might have been bitterness, “they're much less friendly than me and Ahsoka here.”

Silence, even as her gut twisted in panic.

He crossed his arms, expression twisting into irritation.

“Okay, we tried. Snips?”

Ahsoka's hand returned to her lightsaber, but she was hesitant. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, her terrifyingly sharp teeth briefly catching the grim light.

“Snips,” he snapped.

She swallowed back a sigh. “Trust the Force, not my feelings,” she recited. “I know. But – ”

“ _Ahsoka_.”

“ _But_ – ”

His face tightened comically. He beckoned her closer with a hand, turning to face the other direction –

– and what ensued was a poorly disguised argument conducted mostly in a series of hissed whispers.

“Ahsoka, they are _clearly_ Separatists –”

“They need _help_ –”

“ _Separatists_ , Snips, or darksiders, we can't help – no, _no_ , don't give me that look, _I hate that face_ – ”

“I thought you wanted me to work on _negotiating_ – ”

“That was before we figured out that these people are probably _Separatists_ , Snips – ”

“You and I both know it's not that simple, Master. We can't just throw them to the Council, they need our help. And they know something about the weird scary rip.”

“You need to come up with a better name for that.”

“ _Master_.” Her shoulders slumped. “Don't you feel it, too?”

Hilariously, incongruously, Anakin Skywalker, future destroyer of worlds, seemed to be no match for the beseeching pout of a fourteen-year old. He paused, running a hand through his sandy hair, face clenched comically. He let out a breath.

“Okay. Just – just let me think.”

“Are you asking yourself what Master Obi-Wan would do.” Ahsoka's voice turned dry.

“Let me think!”

“Are you asking yourself what _Senator Amidala_ would do?”

The hand left his hair slowly. He turned to look at Ahsoka, who looked back at him in consternation, forehead markings wrinkling into a frown.

“Seriously, Skyguy?”

“It's _your_ idea.”

Ahsoka looked for a moment as though she was going to contest that particular statement, but she relented with a sigh.

“Master Obi-Wan is gonna kill us both,” she pointed out.

“Not if Padmé does first.” He shrugged. “Besides – technically, this is curriculum approved.”

“Are you gonna put that in the official Council misdemeanour report you're eventually going to have to write up?”

He smirked. “You're forgetting one very important word, little one.”

She frowned. “And what's that?”

He draped an affectionate hand on the top of her head, still smirking. “ _Delegation_.”

“ _Hey_ – ”

“Keep an eye on our new friends,” he said, face dropping into a more serious expression. A hint of blinding resignation leaked out into the Force. “I have a comm to make.”

“Say hi to the Senator for me,” Ahsoka said, a little too innocently. Vader looked at her, expression flat, before turning away and stalking a few metres down the corridor, out of earshot.

There was no saliva left in Leia's throat. Senator Amidala. Senator Amidala, who by all accounts – by _Luke's_ account, anyway –

“It's alright,” Ahsoka said, perhaps sensing her mounting distress. “The Senator's a good person. I'm sure she'll be able to help us.”

Us. Already, somehow they'd become an 'us'.

“Why,” Leia said, throat still painfully dry. The words scraped across her mouth. “Why are you doing this? You have no idea who we are.”

Ahsoka regarded her thoughtfully, painfully young face half draped in shadow. But her expression was clear, and in the Force she was still bright, sharp. Clear like the surface of a lake.

“You're right,” she admitted. “And my master's right, too. It's not always a good idea to only trust your feelings. But I think part of being a Jedi is learning when to put your trust in the Force, and right now – ” She shrugged. “It's telling me that you're not here to hurt us. It's telling me that maybe we can help each other.”

 _You're wrong_ , Leia didn't say. _I came here to destroy everything_. She bit her tongue instead, the words souring in the back of her throat. None of this was going according to plan. And this particular derailment was – _spectacular_ , almost, in its execution. Her target was right within her sights, and she still couldn't – couldn't –

There was a sick kind of irony in being helped by the man she'd come to kill in cold blood.

Eventually, she knew, her ruthless pragmatism would out. It had to. The moment would come. And until then –

She couldn't help but be horrifically fascinated by the brief glimpse of the life they'd stumbled into, somehow everything and nothing like she'd expected. Vader, especially, was – different. Almost too different to reconcile with his legacy, and if she thought about it too hard, it would only hurt, and so she didn't.

(She'd always rejected the way Luke told the story of their father's fall, like it was some kind of tragedy. Vader had been a monster, Amidala the weak-willed lover of a murderer, and of course it was too simple, intellectually she knew that, but some nights the only way she could ever get to sleep was by – )

There wasn't the same longing in her, like there was in Luke. She'd had parents. She'd had a father, and a mother, and it had never felt like anything was missing at all. (Well. Until they – )

She was briefly filled with anger, most of it self-directed. Luke should have been awake. He was always the one that had felt like he was missing something. She didn't want this, and more than that, she didn't feel like she deserved it.

But it was happening, whether she wanted it to or not.

“Thank you,” she said to Ahsoka, slowly. “For not bringing us to your council.”

“Of course.” Ahsoka blinked, and her kindness was so genuine that it made her feel almost sick with guilt. “Like I said. We follow the will of the Force.”

 _The will of the Force has taken everything from me_ , Leia thought again, but didn't speak.

Vader stalked back towards them, comm snapping closed, the sound echoing throughout the vast underground corridor. He looked chagrined, and hid it badly.

“Good to go,” he said, one hand – the prosthetic one, she noticed, a bit belatedly, feeling a rush of similarly belated anger, decades late. _You went through the trauma of losing an arm, and decided to lop your only son's off too_? – lingering awkwardly to scratch the back of his head. “Come on. Let's head back to the surface. We can catch an air taxi from there, her apartment's not far.”

“Was she happy to hear from you?” Ahsoka inquired, and there was more than a hint of mischief colouring her voice, sliding across her face.

Vader cleared his throat. “...she might have been in the middle of a budget meeting.”

Ahsoka smiled and nudged him gently in the shoulder. “It's okay, Skyguy,” she said. “I know the Senator. She loves danger. And helping people. Once we involve her in this secret, dangerous, probably illegal plan, she'll definitely forgive you.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” he muttered.

Ahsoka only shook her head fondly, and turned back to face them.

“Do you need help?” she asked. “With your brother.”

“No,” Leia replied. “Just – just give me a moment.”

She turned on her heel and crouched down beside Han and Luke, placing a hand on his knee in apology. Han was white-faced, jaw so tense it hurt to look at, confusion sharp and bright like a knife in the air around him.

“Is _that_ – ” he hissed.

“Yes,” she whispered back, harshly, willing him not to make a scene. _Trust me_ , she implored with her eyes, fingers tightening on his knee.

“And is _that_ – ”

“ _Yes_ ,” she hissed. “But shut up about it. I – I have a plan. Just roll with it, flyboy.”

“ _I hate your plans_ ,” he hissed back at her, mutinous, but he didn't have a leg to stand on and he knew it. He swallowed, and it looked painful. “Fine,” he muttered finally, quietly. “But eventually you're gonna tell me what in the nine Corellian hells is going on.”

“Once I figure that out, you'll be the first to know,” she shot back. “Until then, we roll with it. Okay?”

“ _Fine_.” He took a brief, shaky glance up at the two Jedi waiting for them. “This is not how I wanted to meet your in-laws, princess.”

The muffled yelp that ensued when she swatted him on the knee probably did nothing for their credibility, but it made her feel a lot better.

“Help me with Luke,” she asked. “We have to get to the surface. They're taking us somewhere.”

They each took hold of a shoulder, and rose collectively, hunched over. The roiling, stinging feel of her brother in the Force washed over her, smoke filling her nose, fresh worry twisting her gut. Shuffled awkwardly, painfully, out of the lift car. He didn't even rouse.

“Where is this somewhere?” Han questioned, squinting in the dim light of the corridor. He kept a wary eye that was almost a glare on Vader and Ahsoka, who seemed just as uneasy about him.

Leia sighed, shifting under the weight of her brother.

“I'm not exactly sure,” she said, the Force twisting around them, in and out of her grasp like a bar of soap. Like an unravelling thread. “But something tells me it's going to be an awfully long walk.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look, I get that it might not be to everyone's tastes, but the premise of Leia expecting Anakin Skywalker to be this dark, brooding monster and instead getting a taste of the Snips and Skyguy Comedy Hour is just objectively so hilarious to me, so, like, here you go, I guess? This is fairly early days in Ahsoka's apprenticeship, btw, so they're being especially immature this week.
> 
> (also - the concept of burnout has some precedence in some of the tie in novels I've read, I think, but I'm fairly sure it's also one of those Fandom Created concepts to an extent, and so, like, I didn't come up with it and don't want to take any credit for it - just so that's clear lol)
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and please let me know what you thought! Have a great week, friends.
> 
> \- W


	8. viii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #murdersquad.....takes a bath....and then a nap.
> 
> (I, uh. I wish I was joking, but unfortunately that is the primary Plot Content of this chapter for reasons that I can't even fully explain to myself, tbh)
> 
> (Please Enjoy?)

 

“General Skywalker.”

Senator Padmé Amidala, former Queen of Naboo, had been one of Leia's childhood heroes. She could remember with a painful, nostalgic clarity, sitting in patches of sunlight on the floor of her father's office, captivated by the holos he provided, the recordings of speeches she'd given in the Senate. Before the Empire. Always so composed and elegant, her face at times pleading, at times cold. Her words imploring and sharp in equal measure, as she needed them to be. Her rhetorical style was captivating. Leia had studied it intensively, even emulated it to a degree. A few of the speeches, she probably could still quote offhand, in their entirety, though she would never admit it. The truth of her parentage had soured those memories – and the shock of being so abruptly confronted with that truth was proving hard to shake.

Nevertheless, she didn't think she'd ever seen the Senator's face make anything quite like the expression it was twisting into now. A pleasant, icy, terrifying smile.

“You know I'm always so happy to have you and Ahsoka drop by,” she said to Vader, tone mild and genuine, but somehow glazed with threat. The impersonal tone of address did nothing to disguise their obvious familiarity. She'd been waiting for all of them in the lobby of what Vader had said was her apartment, dressed to the nines, and though her gaze was fixed on Vader, unimpressed, Leia felt distinctly, inescapably watched. “But is there a particular reason it couldn't have waited until after the Committee on the Inquiry Into the Status of Galactic Refugees' plenary budget meeting of which I am the _chairperson of_ was concluded?”

Vader's face had slipped into what struck her as a distinctly Han-like facial expression – a belligerent mix of both fear and indignation - but before she could bury the thought and its implications where they belonged, Ahsoka stepped forward, eyes bright.

“Skyguy can apologize properly later, Senator, I _promise_ this is important. And also maybe illegal. And definitely dangerous. And probably a matter of galactic justice?”

With a twist of her gut, Leia realized that the younger girl's pronouncement wasn't exactly _wrong_. Clearly the Force had some twisted sense of irony. But the sour taste of it passed over the rest of them. Amidala's face softened at Ahsoka's explanation, and she raised her gaze back to Vader, eyebrows lowering, that momentarily terrifying mask of politeness melted. “You should have lead with that,” she said pointedly.

“I was getting there,” Vader protested, following her as she turned. “It's all – complicated.”

“Oh, I have no doubt.” She was teasing him now, but it was subtle. Not subtle enough, by the poorly smothered smirk sliding across Ahsoka's face, but it was good-natured. A secret they thought they were keeping. It would have been almost romantic –

Han squeezed her hand, and if she hadn't known for a fact that he was about as Force-sensitive as a rock, she would have thought he was sensing her thoughts. But the only person who could come even close to that was dead to the world, nestled into the crook of Han's neck in an awkward half-carry. After all these years, she supposed Han didn't need to sense her thoughts to know what she was thinking. She squeezed back in grim acknowledgement, letting her grip linger long enough to communicate an additional 'do _not_ mess this up' along with the implied gratitude. His mouth could run metres ahead of him on a good day. When he was nervous –

Well. There was a reason she usually did all of the talking. They wouldn't be able to get out of this with a blaster. Not right now, anyway. If she bided her time, waited for the right moment, used them to find the holocron first, find the Emperor –

They could be that, to her. Vader and Amidala. A means to an end. Only that. Nothing more. Anything more would be unacceptable.

As if on queue, the senator's impeccable face turned to Leia.

“But we're being rude. Please excuse me. It's been a long day. I'm Padmé Amidala,” she said, perfectly polite, suspiciously welcoming. “If Anakin and Ahsoka trust you, then I do as well.”

(“ _Uh, trust might be a little bit strong_ ,” Ahsoka muttered, sotto voce.)

“Han Solo,” Han offered, cagey, ruder than Leia liked, but that had been the norm for about as long as she'd known him.

“I'm Leia,” she offered in turn, tongue catching on her surname. Organa wouldn't do here. Her father and Senator Amidala had been close friends, from what she'd been able to piece together. He'd always spoken highly of her, at least. “Solo. Leia Solo.” A discreet elbow to Han's side to keep him from reacting, but she couldn't see his face, and their luck was never as good as she needed it to be. She could count on her husband for a great many things, but discretion wasn't one of them. “And my brother, Luke Antilles. Thank you, for helping us. I hope we won't be too much trouble.”

Lies, lies, heavy and sour on her tongue, but they were knee deep in them now. There was no escaping.

“Of course.” Amidala was the perfect host. In another life, Leia might have even found herself jealous. That gracious, welcoming mask was one of the most impressive she'd ever seen. “Your brother, is he – ”

“Burnt out,” Vader interjected. “Like that – ”

“ – time on Cato Neimodia,” Amidala finished, caught somewhere between unimpressed and sympathetic. “I remember. I'm sorry,” she said to Leia, seeming genuine. “Let me know how I can help, please.” But she paused. “You're Jedi?”

“No,” Leia replied, mentally filing away an apology to Luke. “Not – exactly.”

“That's the complicated part,” Vader said grimly, irritation twisting the air around him. “I think we could all do with some answers here.”

“But,” Amidala said, firmly. “Not out in the lobby, like degenerates. I'll have tea set out in the lounge.” With that, she lead them through elegant arches, long, aching lines of Nubian architecture, to the living space beyond. Late-day sun shone through the shielded veranda, and the air smelled sweet. “Please,” she invited, seating herself gracefully on an ottoman. Her gown, a deep purple, rippled as she sat, the satin gleaming as it caught the light. “Sit. Then maybe the General can explain all of this to me.”

Vader and Ahsoka sat together on the sofa, sprawling a little too casually, judging by the minute twitch of Amidala's left eyelid. Leia would have liked to say that she'd seen the same expression on her own face, but in truth it was far too subtle. She never shied away from expressing her own displeasure, except in cases of diplomacy. Subtle expressions were her brother's domain. It was odd and aching and impossible, seeing his smile in the face of a stranger. And it was funny. He looked like Vader, had his colouring, his eyes, but in some ways he seemed far more like their –

Far more like Amidala.

How strange, to have gotten the chance to even realize something like that. She'd never even bothered to dream that she might get the chance. But then, she'd never really felt her birth parents as an absence, the way Luke had. It made it easier to separate them all. Would make it easier to do what she'd come here to do.

“Alright,” Amidala said, hands settling in her lap as Leia and Han sat across from her, Luke pressed between them. “Lay it out for me. What's this all about? And what's so dangerous about it?”

Vader leaned over, elbows to his knees. “You remember that – that _thing_ I told you about, earlier in the week?” He kicked Ahsoka in the shin, gently, at her muttered 'do you tell the Senator classified Jedi information _often_ , Skyguy?'.

Amidala frowned. “The anomaly.”

“The weird scary rip thing.”

“The _name_ , Snips.”

“What? I'm _describing_ it.”

“ _Fine_. Yes,” he said, long-suffering. “The weird scary rip thing. Like the Force had been torn open.”

“I remember,” Amidala replied. “It's alright, Ahsoka, I would have found out about it eventually. The entire Senate's talking about it and pretending they're not. What's that got to do with your new friends?”

Leia refused to look, but felt Vader's gaze burning into the side of her head.

“Unclear,” came the pronouncement, irritable. “But the Force is –”

“Calling us to them,” Ahsoka said, far less reticent. “We ran into them in the under-city, and they're definitely connected. They lost something, and we're going to help them. Right?”

Vader's lips were pressed together. His statement came with considerably less enthusiasm. “...Right.”

Amidala raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow.

“It's just as simple as that, huh.” She turned her unreadable gaze to Leia. “You'll forgive me, Miss Solo – ”

“Leia, please.” She kicked Han in the shin, hard, and didn't care if any of them saw.

“Leia. But I don't have the Force whispering in my ear, and I usually like a little more information to go on before I commit myself to breaking the law. Which I would be doing, by taking you in, if you are who I think you are.”

This was the balancing act. That thin line between the truth and the lie. She'd been good at navigating it, once. She'd stared down men like Tarkin and lied straight to their faces without batting an eyelash, shielded by the invincibility of youth, righteous fury at her feet.

She was older now, even if she didn't necessarily feel it. With the Empire gone, she hadn't had to lie to protect a cause for years. Not really. Not like she had, once.

But that didn't mean she didn't still have it. She raised her chin.

“There's much I'm not at liberty to say,” she said, reluctance unfeigned. “I understand that puts all of you in a difficult position, and I'm sorry. But you have my word that we mean you no harm. We have no stake in this war, and we belong to no sides. Our mission here is personal.”

Lies and truth, all tangled up and delivered on a platter. Her father – her real father, Bail Organa, who had gone farther than she ever had, lied through his teeth to the entire Senate, to the Emperor himself, hidden the Rebellion and its movements behind a face like stone for years and years – would have been proud.

Amidala's eyes flickered to Vader. “Anakin?” she asked.

He nodded, meeting her gaze. “The Force – ” A grimace. There was an oddly familiar sounding clatter of metal and screeching joints from behind him. “Actually, the Force is being a little weird, but I think that's because of the anomaly. You can trust them. I think. I wouldn't have brought them here if I thought they were a danger to you.”

“A ringing endorsement.” But her gaze had softened. Whatever she saw in Leia's face, heard in her voice, it was working. _Too kind_ , Leia found herself thinking. _Too willing to be kind._ Just like her brother. “But I suppose we've done crazier things than this. Anakin mentioned an artefact?”

“A Sith holocron,” she confirmed. “It was stolen from us. It can't fall into the wrong hands. The entire galaxy is at risk as long as it's missing.”

Something golden glinted in her peripheral. That familiar sound, again, though she couldn't quite place it –

“Oh, Mistress Padmé, you didn't tell me we'd be having guests! I would have prepared the ceremonial blend – ”

Saliva and confusion caught in her throat and in the corner of her eye she watched Han turn white with shock and reflexive irritation.

“Threepio?” she mouthed, before she could stop herself, but her admission was covered by the droid's fretting. Like out of a dream – possibly a nightmare, now she thought about it – he stood, catching golden in the early evening sun, shinier and in better repair than she'd ever seen him. While she and Han gaped, Amidala had half-stood, directing the droid to place the tea on the long table between the sofas.

“It's alright, Threepio,” she was saying, far more understanding than most people forced to interact with him. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you, it was very short-notice.”

“What will they think of us? It's hardly proper – ”

“Threepio.” Amidala's face caught a line of sunlight, glinting in her teeth and the deep brown of her eyes. Her face was patient, but firm. “It's alright. It's my oversight. Why don't you start on some dinner for our guests?”

“Well, I suppose I – ”

“The sooner the better.”

“Yes, Mistress Padmé.” He tottered off, as anxious and malfunctioning as ever, clearly relieved to have something to do. Busy work, Leia thought in wonder. Just as effective as it always was, at stopping him from fixating on the little details. But how in the nine hells –

“That's Threepio,” Amidala said, reaching forward to pour them all tea. She passed the first cup to Leia, the smell of it steaming up towards her, sweet and aromatic. “He's my protocol droid. He's a little nervous, but he'll help you however he can.”

“Uh,” Han's mouth was still gaping. He looked down at Luke, whose head was resting on his shoulder, brow twitching in what she guessed was a kind of shell-shocked disappointment that he wasn't awake to participate in whatever the hell kind of revelation this was. “Where did you, uh. Where did you? Get him?”

Amidala frowned, confused. Vader cleared his throat.

“I built him, actually. When I was a kid. That's why he's a bit – ”

“Neurotic,” Ahsoka offered.

Leia swallowed back her sip of tea so she didn't spit it out all over the senator's expensive-looking carpet.

“Interesting,” Han choked out, face twisted painfully. He looked down at Luke again, mournfully.

Leia swallowed again, so confused it was starting to hurt. A mystery for another time. “Does this mean you're letting us stay?”

“Yes,” Amidala said, taking a sip of her tea, seemingly intent on trusting them. “For now. We can talk more in the morning, about your predicament.”

Vader leaned forward, apparently still unsatisfied. “But the anomaly – and the holocron – ”

“Can wait.” Amidala frowned at him. “Look at them, Ani. They're exhausted. Mister Solo's gone all red in the face.”

Han cleared his throat, not quite recovered. Leia patted him on the knee, resigned.

“Fine,” Vader said. “We did bring them here, I guess. I'll find a reason for us to come back in the morning. Is – ”

“Master,” Ahsoka interrupted, face grim. “I know all of this is important, but I'm pretty sure we've missed the Council briefing on the scary weird rip thing. It's past sundown, now.”

“I told you, Snips, you need to think of a better name for that.”

“ _Master_. The Council briefing?” She looked at him accusingly. “Did you leave your comm on silent again?”

The blood drained from his face. He stood, and she followed.

“Uh. Possibly?”

Ahsoka rolled her eyes in a way that struck Leia as unnecessarily dramatic, taking the comm from him without question and without looking when he passed it to her gingerly. The action had an air of slightly odd ritual to it.

“Twenty missed calls,” she recited dryly, as his expression grew more chagrined. “And...thirteen unheard messages.” She looked up, sighed. “Master Obi-Wan is gonna kill you.”

“We're a matched set, little one. He's going to kill both of us.”

“Nuh uh.” She shook her head. “You're supposed to be _responsible_ for me. And Master Obi-Wan told me last week that he thinks I'm a good influence on you.”

“And that,” Vader drawled, placing a hand on her narrow shoulder and beginning the process of steering her towards the lobby of the apartment, “is because he hasn't had the pleasure of flying a ship with you yet, Padawan. C'mon, let's head back to the Temple.” He glanced back at Amidala. “You'll be alright?”

“I think I can take care of three exhausted Separatist defectors on my own, General. One of them isn't even conscious.”

“Not Separatists,” Leia corrected.

“Of course not,” Amidala corrected, clearly unconvinced, though equally unconcerned.

“Okay.” Vader seemed similarly unbothered. Leia wondered absently how the two of them had managed to stay alive long enough for her and Luke to be born. “We'll be back in the morning, then. May the Force be with you.”

“And with you two.” Amidala smiled at their backs, returning Ahsoka's departing wave. As the sun had set behind Coruscant's towering heights, the lavish apartment's automatic lights had slowly dimmed on, flooding the room with a soft, ambient glow. “Well. Threepio is preparing dinner, if you'd care for some, but I'm sure you're tired.”

Nowhere to go, and nothing to do, for the first time in days.

“Actually,” Leia said, surprising herself. “If it's not too much trouble, I wouldn't mind a bath.”

Amidala blinked, then warmed.

“Of course,” she said. “The refresher's down the hall and to your left. There should be fresh towels laid out. But, first, if you wouldn't mind –” She rose and retrieved an ornate woven basket from a wall of hidden storage behind them, holding it out in front of them expectantly.

“For your weapons,” she told them.

Han looked at it, frowning critically.

“Are we not including the three separate blaster pistols you have hidden in your gown right now, Senator?”

Trust him to notice.

“It's my house,” Amidala said primly. “I can have as many blasters on me as I like. Usually I'd have a handmaiden or two as well, but in the interest of discretion,” she looked at him pointedly, “I've made other arrangements for my own safety.”

“Han,” Leia said, reluctance sticky at the back of her throat. There was no way around this. “We're guests.” She placed her blaster in the basket, adding it to her ever growing list of obstacles.

Han let out a breath through his nose, but placed his own blaster gingerly in the basket to accompany her own. Waited. The basket didn't move. His shoulders slumped.

“Don't like this,” he muttered, but unearthed another blaster pistol from the inside of his boot, a small, rusted multi-tool, a throwing knife she'd last seen on Lando's person, and a small collection of miniature hand-grenades. (“ _You've been carrying those around this whole time_?” she hissed into his ear, incredulous. “ _We travelled through an inter-dimensional portal_!”) And Luke's lightsaber, unhitched slowly from his belt, surrendered the most reluctantly.

“You'll take good care of them?” he asked.

“Of course,” Amidala promised. Leia believed her, and wished it wasn't so easy. Noted with a tired, calculating chill exactly where the basket was placed. She nudged Han's foot with her toe in comfort and warning, nodded politely to the senator, and stalked as nonchalantly as she could manage to the refresher, following the senator's instructions. Her apartment, while lavish and tasteful, wasn't quite as big as she might have expected, though she was well-practiced in finding her way around extravagant dwellings.

It wasn't quite her taste, the decoration. The Naboo praised unrestrained beauty in all its forms, elegant, extravagant, shapes upon shapes, clean swooping lines and small, exacting details. Alderaanian styles – whether it was fashion or interior design – tended towards the more understated. Soft blues, clean whites. Not without meaning, but not quite so – much.

But it had been a long time since she'd cared to think overly on as frivolous a matter as interior design. No matter how over the top she found the 'fresher, she couldn't deny that its water pressure was the best she'd experienced in a long time, and Amidala had excellent taste in soaps. It was soothing, in a way, to clean the grit from her body and the oil and dirt from her hair, scrub the dried blood still left on her face, and she spent what was likely a slightly unbecoming amount of time in the 'fresher's shower, warming herself under the calming stream of water. Eventually, not without some reluctance, she turned it off and stood, captivated by the leftover steam.

She felt like she'd been running on autopilot for so long that thoughts of basic self-care had been pushed to the back of her mind completely. It seemed almost frivolous to make sure your hair was brushed and neat when every action you took was towards your own destruction. But the simple luxury of being clean brought it all back, and she wondered, trailing her hand along the ornate wall of the shower, hair now damp and clean, how she'd stood it. She wasn't vain, but she'd always taken care of her appearance. Being relatively smaller than everyone else meant extra care had to be taken to ensure respect. A hair out of place, a wrinkle in her dress, if she pitched her voice too high – it all added up.

Her mother had taught her that.

She let her hand fall from its careful exploration of the shower wall. Queen Breha Organa was long gone, Alderaan with her. Even if it hadn't happened yet, even if Breha herself was technically within easy reach, a shuttle ride, a comm call away, she couldn't –

It wouldn't do any good, to think like that. She was nothing to them right now. Soon she would never be anything to them at all. She reached for a towel, just as the door pushed open, cool air encroaching on the warmth of the steam around her.

“Oh, excuse me, Miss Solo, I'm so sorry to bother you – ”

“It's alright, Threepio,” she said as she turned, towel fastening around her torso, almost grateful to be diverted from that fruitless train of thought. Still reeling internally at the droid's inexplicable presence here, though she thought she'd done well to mask it. The last name, too, grated slightly, but she had no feasible alternative. “What is it?”

“If you're finished cleaning up, I've been instructed to take you to Mistress Padmé's closet. She thought you might like some fresh garments.”

Thoughtful. But not, she thought, without some ulterior motive.

“Of course,” she said, concealing her trepidation. “Lead the way.”

The closet was less of a closet as Leia had always understood them, and more of a room unto itself. Her childhood hero, she noted dryly, was clearly something of a materialist. Even when she'd been a princess, she couldn't remember ever owning as many gowns as Padmé Amidala.

Though it was also true that the Naboo held different opinions about that sort of thing than most Alderaanians.

Amidala seemed to pick up on her train of thought, so her face must have betrayed her somehow. She smiled, smooth and just the right amount of deprecating, unconcerned by the awkwardness of Leia's damp feet soaking into the carpet, her dripping wet hair. The fact that she was wearing only a towel.

The Naboo, Leia thought, suddenly feeling very tired, were just a little bit strange.

“I hope you'll forgive me,” Amidala said, voice warm. “I don't take people in here very often. It can be a bit of a shock, if you're not used to it. If I wear the same outfit one too many times, the tabloids at home on Naboo start to talk, and my mother starts leaving passive aggressive messages on my personal comm.” She smiled conspiratorially, as if sharing a secret. “What can I say? Everyone's got their weaknesses.”

“Of course.” Leia smiled back weakly. “I don't mean to judge. They're all very beautiful.”

“You're welcome to anything you like, as long as you're here.”

“That's kind of you.” It was. The senator wore a lot of masks, she thought, but the kindness wasn't a facade. It might have even been the most genuine part of her. “I, um. I wouldn't mind some sleep clothes, if you're offering.”

Amidala beamed. “I thought you might. I set some aside, on that chaise. They should fit. I think we have a similar build.”

There wasn't much she could say to that without sounding suspicious, so she only nodded politely and retrieved them, folded neatly on the chaise Amidala had indicated. They were soft and silky, a tunic and trousers, embroidered at the edges in blue and silver.

Amidala turned back towards her vanity mirror and continued the process of unravelling her hairstyle, ostensibly to provide some privacy. It looked like a painstaking process. Probably she usually had a couple handmaidens around to help. Whatever the reason for their absence, Leia was grateful for the added privacy. The less people around to catch them in their secrets, the better. She scrubbed herself a little drier with the towel and pulled the sleep clothes on, trying not to enjoy the softness of the fabric too much. She was a general. She'd lead armies and crawled through mud and spent the last five days sleeping on the damp ground with blood caked under her nose preparing to wipe herself from existence –

But she had been a princess once. She was one still, if she was being honest with herself.

“They're lovely,” she acknowledged, begrudging. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” Amidala twisted back around to her, hair now fully unravelled into one long, single braid. “Miss Solo – Leia. You never told me where you're from.”

“No,” Leia agreed, suddenly wary. “I didn't.”

“I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry. It's only that I couldn't help but notice your braid, earlier.”

 _Sithspit_. “Foiled by my own hair,” Leia said, exhausted. Unsurprised. “That's a new one.” She pressed her lips together. “My parents were Alderaanian expats.”

“Were.” Amidala's gaze softened. “I'm sorry. Like I said, I don't mean to pry.” She paused, a bit hesitant. “If you'd like, I could braid it again for you. I'm as good as any handmaiden with a brush.”

It was the moments like this, she thought, a bit dazed, pressure building behind her eyes, a kind of betrayal of the more rational parts of her. Moments like this that made the whole thing feel not quite real.

“I'd like that very much,” she said, mouth dry, ignoring the angry pounding of her heart, the guilty roil of her stomach. To refuse would look far too suspicious. They had to stay amenable, all three of them. Right up until the moment they didn't. She joined Amidala at the vanity, kneeling at the foot of its seat, angled to give Amidala access to the back of her head. Steeled herself against the odd nostalgia of it all. No one had done her hair for her in years and years.

“Your brother is resting in the guest room,” Amidala said, running an ornate-looking comb through the ends of her hair. “Threepio's keeping an eye on him. Your husband fell asleep on the sofa while we were drinking the rest of the tea and I didn't have the heart to wake him.” She smiled again, caught somewhere between amusement and sympathy. “He's quite the character.”

“That's probably the kindest thing you could say about him,” Leia replied, amused in turn, though some of it was reflexive. If she thought too hard about what they'd talked about without her, she'd probably have a stress aneurism.

Amidala's hands wove deftly through her hair, weaving strands together with practiced grace.

“No,” she said gently, “we had a pleasant conversation. He's rough around the edges, but it's clear that he cares about you. Your brother, too.”

“Well. Family is like that. We've been through a lot together.” She swallowed back the urge to fidget. The Force felt cool and calm in the late evening, quietly muffled, but there was a note of tension in it that she couldn't untangle from her own thread of worry. “And Luke and I are a matched set.”

“Which one of you is older?”

Amidala was good at conversation, Leia decided, fighting the urge to relax against the soothing feel of hands in her hair. It was too much like being a child again, too like the hours she had spent with her mother, talking, braiding. She couldn't let herself become too comfortable. The questions were innocent, but they could just as easily turn towards topics that she wouldn't be able to answer. Amidala had already caught her off guard once.

“We're twins,” she said. “Luke maintains that he's the older one, but neither of us is sure. We didn't grow up together.”

Amidala's careful braiding paused.

“I'm sorry,” she said, meeting Leia's gaze in the mirror. Her eyes, dark like Leia's own, were full of sympathy. The reflection in the mirror would have been an almost dangerous image, with the right knowledge. Their likeness was unmistakeable. Leia held her breath, chest aching with something she couldn't put a finger on, but the moment passed. “I have a sister,” Amidala continued. “I couldn't imagine growing up without her.”

An aunt. Out there, somewhere. Maybe even still, in Leia's time. She'd never sought any of Amidala's family out.

“We found each other eventually,” she said, shoving the thought behind her. “I suppose that's what really matters.”

Amidala hmmed in reply. “And do you have any other family?”

“A son,” she said, before she could find it in herself to lie.

Amidala's face flickered briefly in confusion, before it was smoothed over by her politician's mask. She looked too young, Leia realized. Too young to have a child and be so far away from them.

“If you don't mind me asking,” Amidala ventured, cautious. Her face was so kind. “Where is he?”

Leia felt her mouth go dry.

“Stolen,” she said, after a long silence. “He was stolen from me.”

The braid was finished. It hung long and shiny down her back, woven together intricately by Amidala's deft hand. Different, somehow, from the ones her mother had used to weave, but in a way she was almost grateful. It would have been too much, if they'd been too similar.

Amidala's hands lingered, tentative, at her back, her mask broken open by sympathy. She was small and dark and pretty and impossible, everything and nothing that Leia had ever wanted and never wanted, that she'd ever thought to imagine, and it was too much, too much –

“I'm sorry,” she said, tongue scraping dryly against her throat, the pressure behind her eyes betraying her. They glinted in the vanity's reflection, suddenly wet. Amidala's, too, had gone dark and glassy.

“Don't apologize, please,” she said softly. “This war has taken too much from all of us.”

“Yes,” Leia said, nearly shaking. “The war.”

Amidala dampened her hands with a single drop of scented oil and ran them, with an air of ritual that Leia had no context for, from the crown of her head down the length of the braid, rubbing the oil into the ends of her hair. The scent was rich and spicy, ever so faintly floral. Familiar, somehow, though she couldn't remember having smelled it before. Like an old, old memory. The oldest she had.

“There,” Amidala said, voice still gentle. “All done.”

The silence lay thick and heavy with the encroach of night. Leia felt her lids grow heavy, against the dissipating pressure behind her eyes. Amidala stood, breaking the odd, muffled tension with reluctance.

“Thank you,” Leia said, hardly louder than a whisper. She avoided her own gaze in the mirror.

“Of course.” Silvery blue caught the closet's dim lights as Amidala wrapped herself in a long, silk robe. “The guest room is just down the hall. Will you be alright?”

“Yes.” Leia stood, absently marvelling at the fact that her knees didn't ache, though she'd been kneeling on the ground. The braid swung behind her as she stood. “We're grateful.”

“It's no trouble. I hope you'll come get me, if you need anything in the night. Or Threepio, if it's less urgent. He usually charges in the kitchen.”

“I will. Goodnight, Senator,” she said.

“Please,” Amidala said, “call me Padmé. I'll see you in the morning.”

Leia nodded politely to her again, dismayed at her kindness, and dismayed at herself, for falling for it. She fled from the closet, as quickly as propriety would allow, braid beating at her back.

 

#

 

In her absence, Han had found his way from the sofa to the guest room. When she found him, he was sprawled beside Luke, face lit up from above by the glow of a holopad, a frown crinkling his brow. It was the only light source in the room, which was thick and blue with night. He tossed it aside as she entered, sitting up. Their eyes met.

“I thought – ” she began.

“ _I know_.”

“I really thought – ”

“Right there with you.”

“He was supposed to be this – this great hero – and this great evil – ”

“I know, I know, and instead – ”

“Instead,” she breathed, incredulous, and she was laughing, but it didn't feel quite right, “he's this – this – ”

“I _know_ ,” Han said.

The laughter slunk out of her. “He's this – this – _nerfherder_ who reminds me of my brother.” _And of myself_ , she didn't say. _And of you_.

 _And of my son_.

“He's just a person,” she said, voice cracking. “How am I supposed to – ?”

“Hey,” Han said. He held out a hand to her in the gloom. “Come here. Don't you think that's a problem for the morning?”

Obvious deflection, but at least they weren't arguing, for once. She let it happen and joined him on the bed, which was soft and blue and looked wide enough to accommodate half the Resistance. The sheets were cool and silky against her skin.

“Fancier accommodation than we've had in a while,” he commented. “Shame we had to travel through time to get it, though.”

“The price of luxury,” she agreed. She peered over him at her brother, divested of his robe, clothed in a clean tunic and trousers. The blood and soot had been scrubbed properly from his face. It should have made him look better, but free of its previous coating of grime, his face was only pale and sweaty, brow pinched. “Has he woken at all?”

“For about two seconds, earlier. Didn't seem too with it, but he knew who I was, and glared at me until I got his old callsign right. Fell right back asleep, though. Still with the radio silence." He shifted, clearly thinking. Paused. “Speaking of. You gonna give the kid a break anytime soon?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Han levelled a dry look her way. It was easier to avoid his gaze, in the gloom.

“He won't talk until you let him say what he needs to say, princess. I think you know that, somewhere.”

Something burned hot and vicious and desperate at the back of her throat.

“I can't,” she ground out. “Han, I – ”

He lifted his hands in surrender.

“Hey, no judgement.” His gaze softened, mouth twisting into a half-smile. “But do you think you could figure it out sometime soon? I'm worried about him, never mind all the bleeding from orifices. It's like talking to the galaxy's saddest wall.” He shuddered. “Not good to keep all that bottled up inside.”

She nudged him with her shoulder, the gesture fond, familiar. “We can't all get into bar fights to deal with our feelings, Han.”

He leaned back and sighed, throwing her a pointed look.

“Don't think there's a big enough bar fight in the whole galaxy for this one.”

Well. That, at least, he was probably right about.

“You're probably right,” she admitted. “We have another problem, though” she mumbled into his chest, scowling briefly as he snorted.

“You _think_?”

“An _additional_ problem,” she clarified. A hand carded through her hair.

“Alright,” he said. “What else, then?”

“I don't think we're alone here.”

The hand paused. Against her, he tensed.

“What's that s'pposed to mean?”

“I mean,” she said, taking a breath, heavy with reluctance. She'd barely had time to catch her breath today, let alone catch him up on everything she'd felt through the Force. “ I think when we came through that door, we brought Ahsoka – my Ahsoka – with us. She's been trying to – to manifest. I've seen her. Heard her.” _Dreamt her_.

It would have been funny, the way Han scrambled apart from her, disentangling his hand from her hair, but the chill of his sudden absence was too irritating to be hilarious.

“ _Is she here now_?” he demanded quietly, scandalized, pressing a hand to his bare chest.

“No,” she hissed, yanking back the blankets that had moved with him with prejudice. “Don't be an idiot, of course not.” She lay back against the pillows, the tilt of the guest room's shadowed ceilings vast and opulent. That sort of elegance had always been the norm throughout her childhood (though the Naboo, she noted dryly, never hesitated to elevate things to the next level), but now it felt almost alien. Her years as a senator had been comfortable, the apartments she'd lived in with her family during that brief, far-away happiness tasteful and well-decorated, as befitting her station, but the truth was that she'd spent most of her life – certainly the most memorable parts, anyway – sleeping crammed into the corners of military bases, in bunks, in ship's quarters.

None of it felt familiar anymore. Only the warm heat of Han against her, the sound of Luke's quiet breaths. If she closed her eyes and imagined the creak and groan of the Falcon's engines, the hiss and spit of hyperspace just beyond the window, Chewie snoring in the background, Ben, small and quiet, pressed to her chest, _safe_ –

Maybe that was as close to a home as she'd ever found, after Alderaan.

It had never been perfect. But, just for a while, it had been close.

“I just thought you should know,” she said quietly. “I'll tell you, the next time I sense anything, but I promise she's not here right now. Your dignity's intact,” she added dryly. “Though I'm not sure you had much to begin with.”

His mouth gaped, though she knew he was only superficially offended.

“You're winding me up,” he accused, shifting closer to her with a scowl.

“It's not hard to do.”

“Look, this Force mumbo jumbo is a hard enough sell without adding voyeuristic ghosts to the mix.”

“We're sharing a bed with my brother, you laser brain. What's there to voyeur at?”

“Gives me the creeps,” he muttered. “The Force. All of it.”

“Yes, so you've been telling me almost _literally since the first minute that we met_.” She turned her back to him, comfortably irritated, his warmth settling in between her shoulder blades. Burrowed herself under the soft blankets and tangled her foot in his ankle to let him know she wasn't actually that mad. “Goodnight,” she said, exhausted. Closed her eyes.

“Goodnight,” he mumbled into the top of her head. “Sweet dreams.” And for a brief, blissful moment that was far too short, she saw and felt nothing at all.

It didn't last.

She woke choking, phantom smoke stinging her nose, Ben's eyes seared onto the back of her own, green reflecting glassily in their dark, watery depths, betrayal that sang deep and bright and dark and cold, and it was burning, all of it, up in flames, everything that had been built, ashes on her skin, they were all burning, all of them, the _children_ –

“Han,” she gasped, hands scrabbling against the cool sheets. She reached for him blindly, smoke filling her throat, still seeing flames, “Han, please –”

His fingers were cool against her cheek.

“What's wrong?” he asked, voice rough with sleep, eyes sharp and dark like Ben's, “what's –”

The Force shook and roiled and burnt, thrashing like the sea, and she felt herself being pulled back under, swept away by its tide, and he wasn't trying to, didn't mean to, but she couldn't become trapped –

“Wake him up,” she begged, burning, guilt sitting so heavy on her chest she couldn't breath for it, “please, wake him up, wake him up, I can't –”

It was the wetness in her eyes that did it. A tear caught on Han's thumb where it rested on her cheek and any colour that had been in his face vanished in the watery moonlight. He left a hand on the side of her face but turned, half-panicked, calloused fingers trembling against her cheek.

“Hey,” he crooned, shaking Luke gently at the shoulder, ominously still at Han's other side, twisted and tangled up in the Force. She shut her eyes against the imagined roil and shake of it, one sense deadened against the rest, aflame. Pressed herself into the mattress. “Hey, kid, wake up, come on –”

Luke gasped awake, disrupting the stillness, and the Force slunk from her, its grip retreating like the sea. She kept her eyes closed, shuddering. Ben's gaze was fastened at the back of her head, mutinous, betrayed.

“It's alright,” Han was breathing audibly, thumb scraping at her cheek. “We're all fine here. Nothing but the dark.” He was shaking, too. The shape of him in her mind wavered and spun, frantic, but his voice was smothered calm. “Hey, now, don't look at me like that, it's okay.” He shifted, rustling the sheets. “Neither of you will look me in the eye,” he said lightly, though the words were not. “It's enough to give a guy a complex.”

In the dark, under the cover of night, it might have been easy to tell him why. The words stuck in her throat, trapped by the echo of her son's reproachful eyes.

“We're okay,” Han said into the darkness, when neither of them responded. She pressed her hand against his where it still rested on her cheek. Beside her, he moved slightly. “Don't – don't give me that look, kid,” she heard him say, more quietly. “Like you ran over my akk-dog. It's okay. S'not your fault.”

Charred guilt that wasn't entirely her own swirled at her periphery. Confusion, edged with terror.

“Han,” she breathed, opening her eyes.

“Too warm,” he whispered back at her unspoken question. “He's not with it, princess. In the morning, I think we gotta - we gotta do something. This isn't right.”

She sighed, worry swooping in her gut. Guilt, and this time it was only hers, sharp and bright like the edge of a saber, not charred and black and smoking. _I will do whatever you ask_.

“We're alright, here,” Han said again, a bit louder, talking to both of them in that odd, rambling cadence that took him over whenever he was out of his depth. “Just, ah – here.” The sheets shifted underneath her as he moved, and she twisted to get a better look. He was piling an extra pillow under Luke's head, angling him upright to hold bonelessly against his chest. “Don't know how to fix the weird Jedi voodoo, but where I'm from the best way to take your mind off night terrors is to take a closer look at the shapes in the shadows.”

Something tugged sharply in the centre of her chest. Ben, six, or five, or younger, tiny fingers caught in Han's trouser legs, eyes shining beseeching and afraid in the dark, like it was yesterday. ' _Go back to sleep_ ,' Han had always said. ' _I've got this._ '

“Don't pretend,” she rasped, pained. “Chewbacca taught you that.”

Han looked down at her. Luke was pressed at his side, bangs plastered to his forehead, a new trail of red seeping down his nose, almost black in the gloom. Less than before. Han had clearly swiped at it with the rag before it could stain the expensive sheets. Eyes half-lidded. Awake was too generous.

Han paused. Relented.

“What can I say?” he muttered. “Fuzzball made for a better mother than I ever got. You coming?”

“They're not my nightmares,” she said, almost primly, but she was lying. She sat up and tucked herself against his chest, head under his chin, taking what blanket could reach with her. It was almost unnecessary. Han's skin was warm, and pressed so closely together, her brother radiated heat, even as he shivered. Han met her eyes. _Not good_.

“Always worse at night. I'll keep an eye,” he promised. _I've got this_. “Look for the shadows.”

They hung tall and viscous in the late night, thrown against the wall in towering shapes by the ambient light from the city beyond the window. She settled against his chest reluctantly and followed the line of them with her eyes. As a little girl, she'd been terrified of them, though she wasn't about to admit that now. For years, she'd slept with all the lights on.

“Cloud City,” she said, pointing at the wall right across from them, at the smooth, elongated silhouette of the bedside lamp. “And beside it is an Ewok.”

“Looks more like a tauntaun to me.” He glanced down at Luke, awake but not quite aware. “Though I guess you're the expert. Ringing any bells?” No response, but his breaths had slowed to something less frantic, calming with the Force around them. She watched Han swallow back his worry. He conceded with a raised eyebrow. “Fair enough. Not our shiniest moment.”

Understatement. She bit back a smile. “The one right above us.”

“Oh, easy. Hyperspace lane.”

“Predictable, flyboy.”

“And that blob in the middle is a modified VCX-series auxiliary starfighter.”

“Just looks like a blob to me.”

“You have to _look_ for the shapes. That's the whole point. And it could be worse. All Chewie ever saw was different kinds of prey animals.”

“Oh? Then I think it looks more like a womp rat.”

“You've never seen a womp rat.”

“Luke has.”

“Think he gave you the wrong idea about what constitutes a _prey animal_ on desert backwaters, princess.”

“A si-hen, then.”

“I'll allow it.”

“What about that one?” On the opposite wall, a writhing mass of shapes, something moving from beyond the window, thrown onto the wall. Coruscant never slept, though the Senator's apartment was well-insulated, from light and from noise.

A pause. “Dianoga.” She swatted his chest half-heartedly. “What? Don't tell me you don't see it.”

It was easier to live with everything, in the muffled quiet of late, late night. Easier to face her family when their faces were obscured by gloom. Easier to muffle her worries under the cover of darkness, against the warmth of Han's chest. Easier to pretend.

 

“Yes,” she said. “I see it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright, so it's 4:30 in the morning and this is. this is literally like twenty+ pages of just, like. straight up talking. so, uh. sorry? I guess? To be fair, a lot of it is important exposition that I couldn't get rid of - annnnnd the rest is a bunch of darlings that I probably should have killed in the interest of brevity, but??? I liked too much of this to chop it up too much, so hopefully you'll like most of it too?? 
> 
> (the plot is about to start high-tailing it, I promise.)
> 
> anyway, sorry friends, I am real tired; I'll do another check for grammar and typos in the morning but in the mean time feel free to point any out if you find them, if that's your thing.
> 
> Hope you are all surviving my favourite time of year, Fake Spring/Exam Hell! I'd love to hear what you thought! More on the way.
> 
> Best,
> 
> \- W


	9. ix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Take Your Daughter Hunting For Holocrons Day at work; Leia and a certain Tired Ginger Dad Man finally meet and have a great time wildly misunderstanding one another. Yeah, it's that time, folks.
> 
> (edit: I'm an idiot and forgot to name the chapter earlier lol - fixed now!)

Morning brought Vader and Ahsoka back to the tall, sloping arch of Amidala's lobby, where Leia met them. Cool morning sun threw bright lines across the marble, and caught golden in Vader's hair, glinted against Ahsoka's teeth. She, at least, seemed happy to see them.

Amidala had left earlier for work, before Leia had woken. Some kind of Senate emergency – there had been a note. She found herself missing the other woman's gift for diplomacy, against her better judgement. Leia was a talented diplomat in her own right – but family was always different.

Family was always harder. Especially hers.

“Your husband –” Vader began, eyes narrowing suspiciously at Han's absence. Leia all but rolled her eyes.

“Is still asleep,” she said. “My brother, too.”

He seemed unconvinced. “Aren't they a part of this?”

 _Not willingly_. But that wasn't why she'd left them sleeping. It was easier on them, too. This was her responsibility. “I speak for all three of us.”

“Speak, then.” He crossed his arms.

She crossed hers in turn, glaring at him. “There's not much I can tell you that I haven't already. We're not Separatists. We're not saboteurs. No one sent us. We have a mission here, but I can't speak about it. Someone stole our holocron, but I'm not sure who.” She swallowed. The note of fear that slipped into her voice was, unfortunately, all too real. “But I'm afraid that whoever has it has nothing good in mind. The knowledge within it is dangerous, especially in the wrong hands.”

“What does that make you, then? The right hands?”

“ _Yes_.” She didn't hesitate. “Look, I don't expect you to believe me or to trust me about anything else, but I'm not lying. That holocron is dangerous. It's in all of our interests to get it back. I'm sure – I'm sure your Jedi Council would agree.”

Ahsoka glanced up at Vader, shrugging. “I mean,” she said. “They probably _would_. Sort of.”

He sighed and dropped his gloved hand lightly on the top of her head, between her montrals. “Obi-Wan is gonna kill us.”

“You keep saying that.”

“That's 'cause it's _true_.”

They looked to each other for a moment, eyebrows raised. Leia watched the silent exchange with reluctant amusement.

“Alright,” Vader said, removing his hand from Ahsoka's head. “I guess we're really doing this. Come on, Miss Solo. Let's find your holocron.” He looked down at Ahsoka, who bristled, crossing her arms.

“No,” she warned. “No way. _I'm missing saber practice for this_.”

He smirked. “And whose choice was that? Have fun baby-sitting, Snips. If we're not back by midday and I haven't checked in, call Obi-Wan.”

“No fair,” she said. “I'm the one who found them.”

“And I'm sure the universe is grateful. See you later. Don't touch anything.” He bowed, a bit sarcastically. Ahsoka bowed back in what was clearly a reflex, scowling, and then stalked off into the living space.

“No practicing katas in the living room!” Vader called to her back, an afterthought as he turned to leave. “Go out on the balcony!” He shuddered. “Or we'll both be in trouble.”

Leia followed him, not without some trepidation, out onto the penthouse dock, where a rented air-speeder waited, idling. She clambered into the seat beside him, wincing internally at the antiquated technology. She'd been in air-speeders like this before – they hadn't aged well. Something told her they likely hadn't been made well in the first place. And if Vader flew anything like her brother did –

Her suspicions were unfortunately confirmed, as he took them veering from the dock and into the airway.

“There are _posted speed limits_ ,” she hissed, knuckles white against the speeder's door, belatedly grateful that Threepio's attempt at breakfast had so spectacularly failed. Worry about Han and Luke, left behind, wouldn't leave her, though she wished it would. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“Those are just suggestions,” he said alarmingly, taking a sharp turn. “And that depends on you. Where did you lose the artefact?”

“CoCo Town,” she said, between clenched teeth, still white-knuckling the doorframe. “But it's not there anymore. I tracked it – sort of. The trail went cold at the edge of the Senate District. Underneath it, really.”

She watched him frown out of the corner of her eye.

“What?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” he said, irritated. “And even if it wasn't – you haven't exactly given us any reason to trust you, you know,” he pointed out.

“And you've helped us anyway,” she pointed out in turn, against her better judgement. He scowled lightly but didn't disagree.

“That's true,” he allowed. “And I – I can't explain it. It doesn't make any sense. But Ahsoka's right. There's something about all of you. I don't trust you – ” The scowl deepened. It wasn't directed at her, she didn't think. “But I don't – _not_ trust you.”

“Eloquent.”

 _Now_ he was scowling at her.

“Don't think it's only for your benefit. Padmé trusts you, for one thing. I trust her judgement.” His hands tightened around the speeder's steering wheel. “And for another, you're clearly connected to everything that's been going on around here. You're far more useful to me where I can keep an eye on you. The Council – the Council doesn't always think these things through. They'd lock you up and throw away the key before they could learn anything from you. If this holocron's as dangerous as you say, then it makes sense to find it first and deal with the rest of this mess later.”

Leia pressed her lips together. Inelegant farm boy in one breath, ruthless strategist in the next. He was the worst of both of them, her and Luke.

“I'm not keeping secrets out of spite,” she told him. “It's just safer this way. Once we recover the artefact, I promise, we'll be out of your life.” _And you'll be out of ours_.

“If being a Jedi has taught me anything,” he said grimly, pulling up the airspeeder and parking it haphazardly in what was very clearly a no-parking zone, “it's that it's hardly ever that simple.”

She eyed the flashing zone marker pointedly, but he ignored her, jumping out of the speeder and slapping a token on the dashboard. He held out a hand to help her out of the speeder, a brief grin flashing across his face.

“Military Creation Act,” he said. “It's that special jurisdiction clause. As long as the war is going on, I'm unfineable.” He frowned. “Don't tell Ahsoka that I actually read it. I'd never live it down.”

“Your secret's safe with me,” she said dryly, taking the hand with reluctance. He pulled her up onto the sidewalk. “Now, are you going to tell me where we're going, or am I not trustworthy enough?”

He shot her a look that she'd seen directed at Ahsoka a few times, and it was far too exasperatedly paternal to feel entirely comfortable.

“We're staying right here, at least for the moment. You said you managed to track the holocron to the Senate district, right? If it's still here, I thought maybe the two of us could narrow it down. The closer we are in proximity, the easier it'll be.”

“Using the Force, you mean.”

“Not sure how else you plan on tracking down an evil Sith artefact. We'll have to meditate.”

Now that he'd mentioned it, she could recognize a little better exactly where he'd taken them. They were a distance behind the Senate itself, in what passed for a back-alley. She could see its rounded dome off in the distance, feel the pulse of life within. They were surrounded by expansive, expensive-looking buildings on all sides. Life up here felt more sanitized than down in Coruscant's more exciting underworld. Cleaner. More sterile.

She kept her eyes fixed on the Senate's spires.

Life up here was no less dangerous.

“Alright,” she said, with some reluctance. He was right. There was likely no better way of trying to track down the holocron. Even if the thought of truly working with him made her skin crawl. She hated the feel of him in the Force. Too bright, too sharp, too much. Familiar and not.

He held out a hand. She glanced down at it, skeptical. Watched him flush.

“You're powerful but poorly trained,” he said bluntly, covering up his brief embarrassment. “I – I know a bit about what that's like. It helps to have an anchor, sometimes.”

She paused. She took the hand.

“Your apprentice,” she said, the words ashy on her tongue. She could feel the Force like a current, connecting them. Bright, sharp. Like the edge of a knife. Something that slotted into place far too easily. “Do you do this for her, too?”

He shook his head. “Ahsoka never needed a hand,” he said, cheeks still a bit red. “I, uh. I always did. Too fidgety. Drove my master nuts. But it helps,” he said, a bit defensively. “I don't know what we're looking for. You'll have to show me. That requires a connection, but you're not well-trained, and we're not master and apprentice, so. This is the next best thing.”

“I guess you're the expert,” she said, shifting, trying to settle into the Force. Her shoulders felt tight.

“I'm not going to bite,” he said, exasperated. “I promise I won't invade your privacy. Anything I see will be because you've shared it with me. Look, just – just picture the artefact. Try to remember how it felt when you looked for it the first time.”

Like she could ever forget. She bit her lip and didn't bother closing her eyes. She'd always hated the abstract. The Force was difficult for her to grasp, sometimes, she thought, because she couldn't always see it. It was only the material that felt real. Only the material that she was ever able to accept. Closing your eyes didn't change anything. It couldn't make the unreal real, or the real unreal. She'd watched Alderaan disintegrate with open eyes. Even if she'd closed them, it still would have happened.

“I'll try,” she said, thinking of the holocron. Of the way it felt in her hands, cold and sharp. Of how it felt in her heart, the way it pulled, thick and oily and so terribly appealing. She couldn't hide any of it, but he didn't seem bothered. Only frowned in concentration, his eyes open but distant.

She thought of the thread she'd pulled on. Of the cold path she'd traced it down, the hands it had passed through, the harsh, grating voice inside of it that had promised her everything. Alone, she had so quickly been deterred from it. The world was so bright, so crowded, so distracting. It had been pulled from her grasp with ease, but with Vader assisting, searching with her, anchoring her down, the Force felt much more solid. Concrete, in the back of her mind.

He was much less cold than she remembered. Hardly cold at all, if she was honest. Still bright, almost uncomfortably so, but that was just power. Power without – whatever it was that had fuelled him later. Without the cold and the dark.

She had that power, too.

 _He became what he was_ , she heard in the breeze, a whisper of blue in the corner of her eye. Y _ou've become what you are, too_.

His brow twitched.

“I don't –” he said, confused. “ _Who_ –”

But the distraction only lasted a moment. Together, they'd found the end of the thread.

“That's it,” she said, sharp. The whisper of blue dissolved with the wind. _Not for long_ , she thought grimly. But that could be a problem for later. “That's it, where –”

Vader's gaze had shifted up, towards the dome of the Senate building, glinting in the sun. Her hand was still in his, fingers wrapped around her own absently. Alarm that was not her own set the hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention, though her own quickly followed. She hadn't been sure, before. But now she had no doubt. The holocron had made it into Palpatine's hands.

Her heart sank into her stomach. Hoped against hope that she hadn't in fact just made the galaxy worse off than it might have been. Only time would tell. Time – and action. She had to get it back. Get it back, get rid of the Emperor, and then –

“It's – in the Senate building,” Vader breathed, unaware of her racing, traitorous thoughts. A whisper of his fear nestled into the back of her neck. “How – _why_ would it be there?”

She knew the answer. For a moment, she thought of telling him. Teetered, on the edge of that very sharp knife. Together, they might –

But he couldn't know. He couldn't do anything for her but die.

“I don't know,” she said.

He let go of her hand. The feeling of him in the Force withdrew, but his fear remained, sticky, cold at the base of her spine.

“Padmé's in there,” he said. “We have to go.”

“We have no idea who has it,” she said, lying baldly, but convincingly, she thought. “We have no idea why they have it. No idea what we might be walking into. Besides, if she was in danger, wouldn't we have felt something by now? Whoever has it isn't using it. They just – _have_ it.” For now. “We have to get it back, but barging in there without a plan is just stupid.”

She'd had years and years to learn that, and she'd learned it from the very best. Or the very worst. It depended on how you looked at it.

His lips pressed together. Fear and tension warred, ready to outmatch the rationality she knew was in there somewhere. He was a military strategist. He wasn't stupid. _Come on_ , she thought. _If I can do it so can you_.

“Okay,” he said. His jaw was clenched, so tightly it looked like it hurt.

“Comm her and tell her,” she said. _If it'll make you feel bette_ r. “But if we go in, blasters armed and blazing, we'll regret it.”

“I hate blasters,” he said. But his face lost some of its tightness. “And you're not even armed.” That seemed to convince him. The Force lightened around her shoulders. She hadn't even noticed it growing heavier.

He regarded her.

“Y'know,” he said, far too casually, tension leaking out of him. “Padmé thinks you're a Separatist politician. Ahsoka thinks all of you are Jedi who've gone rogue.” His eyes, crystal blue, a haunting reminder of her brother's, met hers speculatively. She tasted danger at the back of her mouth. “I'm not sure they're wrong, but I don't think they're completely right, either.” His eyes narrowed. “I think you're military.”

Her mouth went dry. _Too close, too close_.

“I have no interest in either side of your war, General.” _It's all the same side, anyway_.

“No.” His face, oddly enough, had gone unreadable. She hadn't appreciated it before, how much of an open book he was. “But maybe you did, once.” He paused. “You're young.”

“I'm no younger than you.”

Technically, she was far older than him, but that seemed a moot point in this particular case.

“Maybe not,” he said. There was something new in his voice, in his eyes. Approval. Respect, of a sort. It burned. She didn't want it, not one piece of it, but it stoked something within her nonetheless. “Something tells me you're just as experienced.”

She didn't contradict him. He had stumbled into a truth, but it wasn't _the_ truth. She could let him have that much.

“My mother used to say, 'the biggest problem in the galaxy is that no one helps each other,'” he told her. “It's – hard to remember that, sometimes. War makes it hard. But I – I do trust you. For whatever reason. Keep your secrets, if you feel like you have to. I'll still help.”

There was a lump in her throat, and she hated that it was there.

“Thank you,” she said carefully, horrified at his kindness. _He became what he was_. She smothered the guilt trying to rise from her stomach and pressed her lips together. “I – I'm grateful.” She wasn't. The universe, she thought tiredly, sure wasn't making her job easy for her. “So what's our next step?”

His mouth set grimly. “Recon,” he said. “We don't go in guns blazing, but I think we need to figure out where exactly that holocron is located in the Senate.” He shook his head. “If it's just passing through, or if someone's really stashed it there.” He crossed his arms, troubled. “I knew there was corruption in the Senate, but this is – this could be something much worse.”

 _You have no idea_ , she didn't say, a chill settling across her shoulders. Though she also wondered at the holocron's location. She couldn't imagine that Palpatine regularly stored arcane Sith artefacts in his public office. It likely wasn't a permanent location. Where might it end up, if they didn't locate it today? Who was to say they'd be able to find it again?

“This way,” Vader said firmly, striding off towards the Senate. “If we approach on foot, we'll attract less attention.”

“Wait,” she said. The chill she'd felt was something different. Something outside herself. Outside and within. The Force twisted, churned. Her knees gave out. Vader's hands caught her armpits before they could scrape the pavement but she couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't feel anything but the Force, reaching and reached for, slipping through her fingers like smoke, it was all _wrong, wrong_ , and Ben's eyes glared at her balefully from behind a plume of fire and smoke that was thick and black –

“You're bleeding,” Vader said, worried.

 _Stop being so nice_ , she thought furiously, incoherently. _I'm trying to kill you_.

“It's fine,” she said, pain sharp behind her eyes, wetness gathering at her upper lip, thick and warm and metallic. It wasn't. Fear pounded up her throat, a material, animal thing. “I'm fine. It's –”

“Your brother,” Vader said, frowning. He helped her to unsteady feet, hands hovering at her elbows. His comm started to beep. “It's Ahsoka,” he said, without checking. Sighed. “One problem at a time. Hop into the speeder. I'll take you back.”

“The holocron –” she said, even though she couldn't quite bring herself to put it first.

“One problem at a time,” he repeated. His face twisted in what looked like resignation. “I said I'd help. I'll answer Ahsoka.” His shoulder slumped, mouth a grim line. “And then I'll make another call.”

 

#

 

Han was waiting when they returned, shadows under his eyes, worry wrapped around him like a spool of string. He stood still, in the entrance to the guest bedroom they'd been given. Like a sentry.

But his stiff arms melted as she took one of his hands, peered up into his face.

“Woke up and you were gone,” he said gruffly.

“I came back,” she said. “We know where the holocron is.”

She waited for the crack about quality father-daughter bonding time, but it didn't come. Her fingers whitened around his own.

“Bad?” she asked.

“Not good,” he said. He swiped a thumb gently under her nose. The dried blood flaked off dark and thick in the gloom of the hallway. “You felt it. Thought you might.” His breaths were quick and shallow. “I'm worried, Leia.”

“I know.”

“No, I –” He took her hand in both of his. “I'm _worried_. We've left this too long.”

She hated it, when he was afraid. Hated it, hated it.

“It's okay,” she said. “I spoke with Vader. He's – he's going to help us. Or find someone who can, at least.”

Han frowned at her. “You're okay with that? You think it's safe?”

The Force twisted around her, unsettled. “I don't feel like I have a choice,” she said, and it was the truth. “It may not be. But I – ” She looked down, away from his gaze. He looked exhausted. Terrified. “I'm sorry, Han.”

“Yeah,” he said, sighing through his nose. “I know.”

She looked past him, into the guest room. The blinds had been thrown open. Like maybe it was the sun that was the answer. The sun that could cure all their ills.

“Leia,” he said, something new in his voice. He let go of her hand.

“Did he wake at all?” she asked.

“No,” Han said, but he was undeterred. “No, he's just – half-conscious, sometimes. He doesn't know where he is. Leia, some of the things he's been saying, I – ” He caught her chin gently, brought it back to face him, when she still wouldn't meet his eyes. “About that night. Are they – _are they_ –”

She faced him, because her chin was in his grasp, but her eyes stayed stubbornly locked on his left ear, stomach twisting.

“I'm sorry,” she said, and her voice was very small. She watched his eyes grow wide and dark. Glassy, in the dim light. His hand left her chin and her gaze dropped determinedly to his knee instead.

“You have to tell me everything,” he said, but he didn't sound angry. Only very tired. It was worse. “Everything, Leia. He's my son.”

“I know,” she said, something thick like guilt climbing up her throat. “I will. But not right now.”

In her peripheral vision, she saw a hand go up. Knew he was scrubbing it down his face, exhausted.

“Give me a minute alone?” she asked.

“Whatever you need.” The words sounded stuck in his throat, but he left with a hand on her shoulder, the echo of his footsteps as he manoeuvred past her and down the hallway. The space he left was void and aching. She stepped through it, teeth gritted. Into the room, with its opulent window dressings and its misleading sunlight and its excessively large bed.

And her brother, pale and absent, at one side of it. Sunlight fell across his face in strips, shadows from the blinds that had been opened. Caught the glistening sweat on his forehead, the red at his nostrils.

“Our father might have been a great pilot,” she told him, too lightly, kneeling in the sun beside him. “But for the record, you should know that being a passenger in his air-speeder is terrifying.” She sighed and put her elbows up on the mattress, rested her chin on the tops of her arms, heart sinking with every breath. He didn't respond. Didn't even twitch, though she could see his eyelids moving. Wherever he was, he was far from her reach. Farther than he'd ever been before.

“You called to me and I came,” she breathed. “But I don't know how to help you. I don't know how to fix this. I don't know how to fix any of this. We've done this all wrong.” She stopped, breathing heavily. “ _I've_ done this all wrong.”

He didn't move. His breaths were laboured, too. Rattling. It was a quiet, terrifying sound.

“We should have told him. We should have told him everything.” She ached to grab his hand, but she didn't dare, the Force still raw between them. “But – but how could I have? He wouldn't – he doesn't – he doesn't _understand_. The shadow you and I live under, the shadow Ben lived under, he can't see it. But I – ”

 _I do_ , she tried to say. _I do understand. I understand what you did. What you didn't do_.

_Why you failed._

She had to let him know she didn't blame him. Why – _why_ couldn't she make the words leave her mouth?

“Please,” she mumbled instead, forehead pressed against his knee, fingers clenched in the blankets, something sour and hot and desperate coating the back of her throat. “Please don't leave. I'm sorry I brought you here, I'm sorry –”

 _I'm sorry I rejected your training, I'm sorry I sent my son to you, I'm sorry he burnt everything down, why couldn't we stop him,_ why didn't you save him –

“I can't do this without you,” she said, voice cracking, undignified, unwatched. “All the rest of it, I don't care, it doesn't matter. I wish – I wish you could see that, because I don't know how to say it.” She kept her eyes scrunched closed against the blinding afternoon sun, crunched over on the ground, knuckles white against the sheets. “Please don't leave,” she said again and didn't move from that spot for a very long time.

 

#

 

Her eyes opened to pale blue sheets and a gentle, unfamiliar hand on her shoulder, broad and warm. She stiffened, extending her senses reflexively –

“Hello there.” A quiet, unassuming brogue reached her ears. The past tickled the back of her neck. _Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi –_

She looked up, stiff and sore from falling asleep so hunched over, and bit back what would have been unbecoming and unexplainable tears. How long ago had it been, since she'd staked all her hope in the face looking down at her now? Irony and an awful kind of grief tangled in her gut.

“You must be Leia,” he said, guarded, mild. Warm, despite it, though she might have been projecting. She didn't know him at all, not really. The face looking down at her was far younger, far more unfamiliar, than the face she'd only briefly encountered. Far ruddier and calmer than his namesake ever had been. But the Force didn't lie, and in the Force he felt like protection.

“Yes,” she said in a whisper, through swallowed-back tears. She'd named her son after him for a reason, and it hadn't been just to appease her brother, like so many (Han included) had thought. “And you're General Kenobi.”

She'd put all her hope in both of them, once.

He didn't move. Only watched. “Yes,” he said. His expression stayed mild, though the Force flickered with what might have been faint interest. “Anakin's told me of your predicament. I don't suppose you'd be willing to offer up any further enlightenment as to your origin?”

She said nothing, tried to school her face into something less suspect, and he didn't look surprised.

“I can't say I approve,” he said, and now his brow did crease with annoyance. There was a sigh at the edge of his voice. “These are dangerous times. We can't afford to keep too many secrets. But – ”

The hand left her shoulder. She wasn't imagining it, the mildness. His expression warmed, though she couldn't say why.

“The Jedi teach compassion, above all. You asked for my help, and I've come to give it. The rest can wait.” He gestured to her brother. “If I may?”

“Please.” Her mouth was dry. She swallowed and tried again. “Please. I don't know – ”

“It's alright.” The hand returned to her shoulder, the air around them – calming, somehow. Jedi. Truly a Jedi, projecting a kind of peace and competence that she'd only ever felt from her brother before. Not from herself. Certainly not from Vader, even if his younger counterpart seemed – so far, anyway – considerably less homicidal than the Vader she'd come to know. “Though I should tell you that healing is not my strong suit. I don't suppose I could convince you to let me take him back to the Temple?”

Panic, fighting against the soothing air.

“Please,” she begged, knuckles whitening against the sheet. “Please, they can't – I can't – explain. I can't explain why we're here. Please. It's important.”

 _You don't know us, you don't owe us anything, but please, please_ –

“I'll do my best,” he said. Cool relief flooded her veins, though she had a feeling it was only temporary. His mild, irritated disapproval, evident despite his kindness, beat at her in waves. It promised the discussion wasn't over by a long shot. Suddenly, a lot of Vader's idiosyncrasies were being thrown into new light. If it had been any other moment, she might have taken the time to laugh.

She clambered to her feet instead, digging her hands into the mattress, numb from the thighs down, legs prickling as blood returned to them. Drew herself into the corner beside Luke as Kenobi sat on the edge, hand extended towards her brother's face. He closed his eyes, the Force drawing close and quiet as he concentrated.

“Burnout,” he muttered, investigating cautiously. “They were right about that.” But she knew from experience that the surface of whatever he was sensing was misleading, and as he pried gently forward any warning she might have given died on her tongue. Too late. She felt it as he breached the surface, touched the burning underneath, the heat and flameless smoke, the charred insides. The roiling, smoking guilt, thick like oil, inescapable. He stiffened in surprise, swallowed, withdrew with difficulty. Opened his eyes to meet her worried gaze, Luke's hand twitching at her fingertips, where her own hand rested, just out of reach.

“I'm sorry,” he said, in what felt like a reflex that he immediately regretted, lips slamming shut, a hand raising to appease the sudden slamming of her heart against her ribcage. “That is, I don't – pardon me. I don't mean to give the wrong impression. I've never seen anything quite like this, but I have no doubt that it is quite reparable. I only meant –” He fumbled. She stared, waiting. “You share a grief. I am sorry.”

She waited a moment longer. Wondered what else he might have sensed in his brief foray into her brother's broken mind, into the edges of her own where they met, but he didn't continue. Only met her gaze steadily, his thoughts, intentions, hidden behind a wall of forceful calm.

“Thank you,” she said finally. The intrusion hadn't gone unnoticed. Beneath her gaze, Luke's eyelids were twitching. She gave in and shuffled her hand into her sleeve, took his own hand in her fabric-wrapped fingers. It seemed to dull the connection between them. Right now, it was the only way she had to let him know that she was there that didn't hurt.

“ _Ben_ ,” he mouthed, less than a rasp, delirious. Charred smoke filled the back of her head. Heat, confusion. “Ben?”

“Shh,” she cautioned, stomach twisting, squeezing his fingers in her own. Couldn't decide if it was better or worse than the barely audible pleas for their father that had kept her up all night. _He's right here_ , she hadn't said. _He's closer than you think and I'm sorry for it_. “Don't reach out. It's alright.”

Kenobi's face was like stone. If he recognized the name, he didn't let on.

“Is there anything you can do?” A poor distraction, but the best she could do. “Your friends, they – they said it would only take time, but I felt it, earlier today, there isn't – this isn't – ”

“Most cases do resolve themselves, in my experience. You've met Anakin and Ahsoka – they've both over-extended themselves at times, and they're perfectly fine. We all have, at one point or another. It's – a part of learning.” His frowned. “My concern is only that – well. From what I can tell. A more thorough examination is likely in order, though you might have warned me – ”

“Your concern, General?”

He met her gaze frankly. “You're both powerful Force users. Even untrained as you are,” and she took a brief moment to take offense on her unconscious brother's behalf, “you reach for it instinctively. It reaches to you instinctively. But whatever happened to your brother, it –” He shook his head, frown deepening. Speculatively, and that was the danger. “It's like he was used to channel it. Far more of it than he ever would normally. It burnt away some of his cells, it caused – damage, I would say. To the body. The brain. Cells can be replenished, but, on this scale –”

“Will he be alright?” The only question she had, and the one everyone seemed the most unwilling to answer. And maybe she didn't deserve to know, maybe none of it mattered, maybe it made her a hypocrite, when their very existence edged the line of a cliff, when their days were so numbered. But she had to know.

She owed Luke her best efforts, at the least. He had done this for her. Because she'd asked him to.

“If you'd allow me, I'd like to try to repair some of the damage. It's not my specialty, but all Jedi possess some ability to heal.” He met her gaze. His own had gone inscrutable. “Though I should warn you that I'll have to venture rather deeply into your brother's mind. Into the Force.”

“Do it.” No question. No hesitation, even if it meant he saw some things he probably shouldn't. She'd found her line in the sand, apparently. The pragmatic part of her railed, but the part of her that loved her brother was far stronger. She couldn't quite bring herself to regret that. “Please.”

“Then I will.”

He placed his hand near her brother's face once more, not quite touching, the Force smooth and cool under his touch. She'd never seen healing being done before. Not like this, in any case. She suspected Luke and herself weren't especially predisposed to it, if Vader was anything to go by. She watched as Kenobi sunk into the Force.

“Pardon the intrusion,” he muttered almost absently, frowning. The Force rippled. The sun at her back was warm. She saw nothing, no physical manifestation of whatever Kenobi was doing, but the air warmed around her, remained calm and soothing. It stayed that way for what could have been minutes and could have been hours. But it grew rougher, choppier, as he ventured deeper. Leia retreated further into herself, away from the flames that licked at her periphery. Kenobi's breaths grew shorter. Luke's fingers twitched at his side. Fear that was not her own settled in her chest. Confusion. _Get out_ , she heard, a whisper. _Who? Who – Ben?_

“That's enough,” she whispered, throat dry. Kenobi's breath caught in his throat. “That's enough.” His eyes flew open, the phantom echo of a lightsaber igniting filling the air. Luke's breath stuttered, fingers twitching again by her side, face twisting. He didn't wake. But there was a little more colour to his face. In the moment after, she watched, tense, as his breaths evened out into something less like a rattle. Her heart settled.

Kenobi withdrew his hand and set it in his lap. He looked tired.

“I heard him,” she said quietly. “For the first time in a while. Did you – did you fix it?”

“It's a difficult thing to fix, as you put it,” he said. “He will repair himself, in time. He just needed some help. I can do so again, if he needs. He might not. He's strong in the Force. I don't think he's in danger any longer.”

She sagged against the wall, sickeningly relieved. “Thank you,” she breathed.

He stood. “Of course.” He paused. She watched him swallow. She didn't recognize the expression on his face, but she didn't like it. “Who is Ben?”

 _Your namesake_. “No one” she said, after a moment. He didn't believe her, of course. His disappointment was a tangible, weighted thing. “My son,” she admitted in a whisper.

“More than that, I think.” She caught hesitation at the edge of his voice, a reluctance that she couldn't get a read on. Quiet, devastating suspicion. “The grief you share.”

Leia swallowed, neck prickling, green searing the back of her eyes. “What about it?”

“Your brother, he's – trapped. In a single moment.” His gaze rose to meet her own. “You both are.”

She would not cry in front of a stranger. For all their unlived history, that was all he was right now. A stranger. A stranger who was dangerously close to uncovering their secrets.

“No,” she whispered.

“Denying it won't fix anything,” he said, mildly reproving. She bit her tongue against any retort, smothering the sympathy for Vader that was struggling up her throat. He was only trying to help. But he couldn't possibly understand. There was no way for him to possibly understand. He had no context, no history. He loved, but not like they did. And he had lost – would lose, still. But not like they had.

There was no way to fix what had been broken. No way except hers. And something simmering in her gut told her he wouldn't be especially amenable to her plan.

But if he suspected anything in that vein, he didn't show it. Only met her mutinous glare with a calm, speculative gaze. A bit grim, she thought, but she didn't know him well enough to be sure.

“Who are you, really?” he asked. He sounded like he didn't want to know. It was duty, she thought. Duty that pressed at him to ask anyway. What had he seen?

“You know I can't answer that.”

No,” he mused, hand trailing down his beard. “I don't suppose you can. Though in some ways, you already have.”

“I haven't told you anything.”

“Oh, you've told me all sorts of things.” He smiled enigmatically. It was not precisely a friendly expression. It reminded her of Amidala's icy smile, her politician's mask. These people lived behind them. “Though you might answer one question for me. Tell me, Miss Solo. Is there justice to the universe? Is there order?”

A trick, a trap. Not a mind trick. Even untrained, she was more than capable of resisting those. No, this was far more dangerous.

But two could play that game.

“No justice,” she said, truthfully. Against all sense, against all reason, though she couldn't say why. “No order. Not naturally. Only that which is imposed.”

His face was still, but his eyes had darkened with something that might have been melancholy. Might have been warning. Might have been disappointment.

“And who imposes it?” he asked.

She stared him down. “What do you think I'm doing right now?”

He drew his hands into his sleeves slowly, deliberately. Frowned mildly, as if confirming a suspicion. The shroud of melancholy remained.

“The rip in the Force. The anomaly. You came through it.”

“I won't answer you.”

His frown deepened. “I'm not asking, only speculating. You may respond, or not, as you wish. But I don't think I'm wrong. You came through that rip, and you brought something dangerous with you. The holocron. You lost it, and that has waylaid you from your original mission.”

Silence. He was right. There wasn't anything she could say that wouldn't only make it worse. She bit her tongue, panic and anger warring in the pit of her stomach. On the edge of a very sharp knife.

“As for _why_ you're here – ” He caught her eye. His own were troubled. “I know who you are. I hope you know what you're doing.”

“Will you tell them?”

“No,” he said, without even hesitating. A brief smile, though again, it was not a friendly expression. “No, I don't imagine I will. It is, after all, quite impossible.”

She kept her face calm, but her heart hammered at her throat. “I don't believe you.”

“You don't know me.”

“I know you well enough to understand your relationship to the truth.”

“Then you understand better than most why I am unlikely to tell your secrets.” His jaw clenched as he spoke. His tone bit. “Or perhaps you don't understand. You have your mother's eyes, Miss Solo. But I think you are your father's daughter.”

He couldn't possibly understand the true scope of what he was saying. What those words truly meant, to her, of all people. That was the only thing that kept her tongue in check, kept the wild, furious denial pressed down her throat. Ice crept up her spine. She was so angry she could barely see, angrier still at the thought, absent, traitorous, that she was proving his point for him. The Force wrapped around her, but it felt more like a noose than a comfort.

“And what,” she ground out, cold, enraged, “does that mean?”

“It means,” he said, mild again, eyes dark and unreadable, “that I have failed as a teacher. In more ways than one.” He turned to leave. His voice floated behind him, soft with reproach. Warning. “I can't imagine what you are doing here. I don't want to imagine. But I will help you in your search for what was lost. I will help your brother. And then I will help you leave.”

His tone brokered no room for argument. And right now, she was far too angry to formulate a coherent response, so she held her tongue and watched him exit.

 _Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi_ –

She sank onto the side of the mattress and brushed some of Luke's bangs out of his face with forced, deliberate gentleness. His forehead was still damp with sweat, eyelids moving frantically, but there was more colour in his cheeks. More life, in his face. At least one of them had gotten something good out of the encounter.

“Sometimes,” she said, voice soft. Her other hand clenched into a fist in her lap, the knuckles white. “I think Han was right about that guy.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, this thing is rapidly spiralling into a monster. Sorry for the delay, folks! This time of year, weirdly enough, is always busy. More plot on the way, but this baby needs some set-up, let me tell you.
> 
> (Mentally, I'm yelling at past-me for throwing in so many separate plot threads, because this thing is way harder to keep track of than TTCRO ever was, but?? *insert shrug emoji here* it's fine?? I guess??? anyways, at least Obi-Wan is finally here, I've been really excited for him to show up lol) (I always love his perspective on everything; I'm sure this doesn't gel with everyone's personal canon, but I've always been of the mind that he had to at least sort of know about Anakin and Padme; it adds a great bit of ambiguity to his character, I think, that he kept that secret/looked the other way for so long, and really, to his detriment)
> 
> anyways, thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought!!
> 
> 'Til next time,
> 
> \- W


	10. x.

She'd fallen asleep again.

 _He became what he was_ , Ahsoka was whispering, crunched over beside her, between the bed and the window. Padmé's guest suite remained intact, but Coruscant had disappeared. Through the glass she could only see wasteland, stretching far. Wind-swept desert, cragged, lifeless. Nearly grey. Like Tatooine in drought, but that memory wasn't her own. _You've become what you are, too. We all have_.

Luke was cold under her hand. A freezing, aching absence that she could feel, like the pull of an ocean's tide. A tide that could sweep her away into that grey, too, if she let it. Ahsoka burned in comparison. She was tangible here. Blue, but solid. Her hand settled over Leia's own.

“I don't know what you mean,” Leia said, voice echoing dissonantly. Sound through water.

Those blue eyes were pained.

_I can't help you if you won't try to understand._

“I am trying,” she insisted. “I _am_. But I came here to do one thing. There's nothing you can say to make me change my mind. Nothing _anyone_ can say.”

_You should tell them the truth. You've already torn this timeline to pieces._

Bitterness, hot, yellow, quick. Swallowed by the ocean. Disapproval. Pity. Flashing through the Force, tumbling like Han's dice. Leia's cheeks burned.

“What would you have had me do?” she demanded. “I don't want your judgement, or your pity. You _failed_. I won't.”

 _I didn't fail_. She'd said that before, too. _You just don't understand_.

Ahsoka's luminous gaze wandered to the wasteland beyond. Her brow creased with - something. More pity, maybe. It was hard to tell. _Ghosts_ , Leia thought, with some disgust.

 _I'm not a ghost,_ Ahsoka said, gaze still fixed out the window. _I keep telling you that. You don't listen very well_.

“Maybe you just never say what I'd like to hear.”

_We're running out of time._

“I don't care,” she snapped. “We're already in the past. Time isn't a problem for me anymore. Soon it won't be a problem for anybody.”

This was her head. Her mind. Her mission. _I don't want you here_ , she thought fiercely, wrapping the Force around her. The sound of footsteps echoed strangely, invasively. She felt herself being dragged towards consciousness. _Out,_ she thought, on the cusp on waking. _Get out_.

Ahsoka only shook her head, tired, blue. Her gaze caught behind Leia's shoulder as she began to dissipate. An old, old sorrow filled her eyes.

_You can't keep me away forever._

It wasn't a threat. Only a promise. Somehow, that was worse.

She woke before she could answer, eyes blinking open to afternoon haze, head pillowed on her arms. Vader lurked at the door to the guest suite, half-in, half-out, and there was blood in her mouth. She'd bitten her tongue.

“Sorry,” he said, stepping all the way in when she didn't immediately object. “I didn't mean to wake you. I – ” He paused. Ahsoka's presence lingered like a film, stronger now than it ever had been before, but he shook it off, clearly unsure what to make of it. It was different than his Ahsoka's, in a hundred different ways. It was possible he didn't recognize it at all. “I, um.”

“What?” she asked, rubbing the grit from her eyes.

“I wondered, uh.” For the first time, she noticed a rusted, well-loved multi-tool clenched in his hand. “Wondered if I could take a look at your brother's hand, actually. I noticed it was looking sort of. Crispy.”

There was an unspoken question accompanying the offer, but she ignored it. What could she have said?

“We've had – other things to worry about,” she said, a bit frostily. More kindness that she didn't want. Didn't need. It was genuine, too, and that was the worst of it. Subtlety was not Vader's strong suit, that much was clear. If he was helping them beyond what she'd asked him, it was because he wanted to. “But – sure.”

He moved closer without invitation, settling himself on the bed, adjacent to her position on the floor. His eyes caught her brother's face, brow creasing in what might have been sympathy. She had half a thought to move, but in truth she liked being near to the window. And it was hard not to absently relish the ease of movement that youth brought with it.

“You met my master,” he said, oddly cagey, picking up Luke's hand and squinting at it. What metal parts weren't charred and rusted glinted in the sunlight.

“Yes,” she said cautiously. Luke didn't wake under his examination, but his cheeks had more colour in them than she'd seen in days. He did seem more genuinely asleep, now, instead of just unconscious. Restless. Less feverish. Closer to the surface than he had been, though the greyness of him in her dream lingered, sat sour in her throat. She wished he was awake. He would have been delighted by Vader; delighted by his piloting skills, delighted by his surprising humour, delighted by his toolkit. Delighted by all the things they shared.

Or at least, he would have been once. She wasn't sure anymore. Maybe it was better this way.

“Thank you,” she said. “For calling him. I'm not sure what we would have done.”

“Of course.”

“Is he still here?”

Vader shifted, pulling a cleaning rag out of his belt to scrub at some of the char. “No. He left. There was some business he had to take care of. He said he'd be back, though. So we can figure all of this out.”

Leia frowned up at him. “And are you...alright?”

There was a pause.

“He's angry with me,” Vader admitted, brows knitted together. Uncertain. He looked young, in the waning light. Vulnerable. Leia hated it. “More than he was earlier. More than he's been in years, if I'm honest. It's strange. I guess he's had more time to think about all of it. This is all a bit – unorthodox. Even for me,” he allowed with a grimace, setting her brother's hand down. “My master doesn't like to break the rules.”

“He cares about you.” The words slipped out before she could stop them. They were true, was the worst of it. It was painfully obvious to anyone with eyes. Disappointment, worry – they were all because he cared. He was keeping Vader's secrets for him, because he cared. Turning a blind eye, because he cared.

He'd all but threatened her, because he cared. In fact, she had the distinct sense that he would break whatever rules he had to, if it would keep his apprentice safe. Regardless of the cost. _How awful_ , she found herself thinking. How awful that they so easily misread each other. From Kenobi's dig about her familial resemblance, she had the sense in turn that the other man had no idea how deeply he was admired, even though Vader's desperation for his approval was immediately obvious, again, to _anyone with eyes_.

Vader seemed – not skeptical, exactly. Uncertain, again. He shrugged. “Well,” he said. “He's – ”

“Family,” she finished quietly.

Vader looked at her strangely. Said, muted: “Jedi don't have families.”

 _You're surrounded by family_ , she thought furiously, heart aching. _How can you not see it? How can you not believe it? How can you burn it all down anyway, you were cared for, you were loved_ –

He felt her own fury, felt the futile echo of things she would never say out loud, and frowned.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I wasn't – I'm not angry with you.” Unfortunately, that was also the truth. “You just. Remind me of someone.”

He huffed a laugh. Shifted on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped.

“It's funny,” he said. “Or maybe just strange. But,” his gaze caught on her brother's face again, oddly transfixed. “You remind me of someone too. I just – can't think of who it might be. Both of you. I barely know you, but you feel familiar to me.”

“The Force brought us together,” she allowed, tongue thick against the roof of her mouth, treading so close to the edge of the knife.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess that must be it.”

He shook off the odd moment. Brought Luke's hand closer to his face, squinting at it more deeply.

“You know,” he said, a bit absently, fixated on the hand. “It's been heavily damaged, but this is beautiful craftsmanship. I've never seen anything like it. The – the movement allowed by the joints, alone, is years ahead of anything we've got on Coruscant.” He shook his head. “I'd give my other arm for an arm like this.”

Truly, magnificently ironic, and she should have been horrified but found she could only laugh, a sharp, halting thing, aborted into the palm of her hand. He looked to her, eyebrows raised expectantly, mouth curving into a grin.

“Now I know I like you,” he said. “Ahsoka hates my jokes.”

She swiped her hand down the lower half of her face and settled her elbows on the side of the bed, horrified with herself.

“My father used to tell jokes,” she told him. “Even worse than yours. They were – they were always terrible.”

“The best jokes always are,” he said, straight-faced but delighted. Luke told his jokes like that, too – flatly, slyly. It must have been Tatooine humour of a sort, that love of irony, that joyful dryness. He came across so gullible, it was always a surprise to people that didn't know him very well. They didn't expect someone so straightforward to be capable of any kind of sarcasm.

He wasn't really, though. Straightforward. He kept the dark parts of himself to himself. His burden, always. And he never lied, really, but –

She sighed, elbows sinking into the mattress. The truth was that they were liars, the both of them. They lied to themselves and they lied to each other, and if it had only ever hurt the two of them, then maybe –

“I wish he'd wake up,” she said.

“I wish he would, too,” Vader said. “If only so he can tell where in the nine hells he got a hold of this hand.” He paused. Tentative. “How did he lose it? The original, I mean.”

She exhaled, a breathy chuckle. “Long story,” she said. “Believe me when I say you don't want to know.”

She could feel his curiosity in the Force, a tangible, twisting thing, but he didn't say anything.

“What about you?” she asked, curious in turn, despite herself. “How did you lose yours?”

The air darkened, but she might not have noticed if she hadn't been paying attention. “A Sith Lord cut it off,” he answered, a scowl twisting his face, though he looked more irritated than vengeful. Like the whole affair had been an inconvenience, though she was sure it had been more than that, if Cloud City had been anything to go by. “Don't worry,” he reassured her, though she hadn't so much as shifted. “He'll get what's coming to him. And it's not so bad, really.” He clenched the hand into a fist, uncurled it carefully. “Except when the ceiling's made of magnets.”

“Magnets?”

He ducked his head, embarrassed. “Well. Anyway, your brother's is much nicer.” He straightened, face pulling into a frown. “He didn't make it himself, did he?”

“No,” she said. “He – he tinkers with it, sometimes. I think. But he didn't make it.”

“Still.” He shook his head. “I'm dying to ask where you all came from, but I know you won't answer.”

“The answer,” she told him, watching the evening sun catch in his hair, “is hard to believe. I'm just sparing you a headache, really.”

“Well, I hate secrets,” he told her, jumping up from the bed.

“You think I don't?” She stayed where she was.

“I'm sure you don't. It's written all over your face. But you're good at keeping them.”

“I have to be.”

His face was like stone. Watching. But he didn't push. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. And I figure whatever secrets you're keeping must be worth it.” But he stalled. “Can I ask one thing? You don't have to answer.”

Something in her felt more forgiving than usual. He was growing on her, though she wasn't sure she was quite able to admit that to herself yet. She hadn't had long enough to come around to the idea. Any breath of him that she found tolerable, any part of him that was kind and honourable and – Force help her –  _funny,_  was all dwarfed by the spectre of his future. The long shadow of what he would become.

“What?” she asked, despite herself.

“The dark side,” he said, hesitant. Truly, deeply reluctant, the words dragged from his mouth. “You've touched it. I can feel it.”

Leia froze. Averted her gaze. “Maybe it touched me,” she said, not denying it, and the irony of it all was almost sickening. But the judgement she expected didn't come, and on second thought, maybe that was even worse.

“I've never thought about it like that,” he said. “I've always been taught that the dark side is a choice.”

The words escaped her mouth before she could stop herself. “Nobody makes choices in a vacuum. Nobody makes choices without context. And sometimes a choice is nothing more than instinct.”

He frowned. “You think – you think reaching for the dark side is instinctual?”

“People do all kinds of instinctive things to protect themselves. To protect who they love. Don't you think a person's actions speak more to their moral character than what they use to act with?”

He shook his head, brow still knitted together, hands jammed into his sleeves worriedly. “I – I mean. The dark side is the dark side. You think someone could use it to do good?”

She'd avoided that question her whole life, precisely because she knew what her answer would be.

“I think,” she said carefully, feeling slightly ill. “That a good person uses whatever tools they have available to them to do the most good. Sometimes that means making choices that are hard. Sometimes that means making choices that not everybody else will understand.”

 _Sometimes that means making a monster out of yourself._ Alderaan had taught her that. Weigh the scales and make a choice, even when it felt like there was no choice to be had. The many over the few, always. Keep hope alive, whatever it cost. Whatever you sacrificed. Whatever it took from you.

“A means to an end.”

“Yes.”

He sank down, shoulders slumping into himself, hands still buried in his sleeves. “You'd make a terrible Jedi,” he said, without judgement. Something about his face, the bitter twist of his lips, the ache in the Force, sat wrong in her gut and tugged at her heart in the same breath and she hated it.

“I'm not a Jedi.” She wrapped her fingers in her sleeve again and held onto her brother's hand. “Everything I know about the Force, I know because my brother taught me. Or because I just – know it. And I've never fallen, but – you're right. I've – done things. In anger. In hate. We all have. Every one of us. I can't believe that makes us bad people.” She met his uncertain gaze. “None of us are infallible. And – none of us are irredeemable. We're just people. Trying to do the right thing.”

Sith hell, she was trying to comfort him when she should have been trying to kill him. Only - she _believed_ it, was the thing. Or had believed it, once. It was harder here. She teetered on the edge of forgiveness, she always had. _Let go, let go_ , that was always the lesson, but – it was difficult for her. Her parents had taught her to be compassionate, kind, reasonable, and they had succeeded, but there was always a part of her, deep inside, that seemed to almost thrive on resentment. She held on tightly to spite, to hate, because sometimes it was all she had to fuel herself. Hate and hope drove her in equal measure, and she didn't know how else to be, even when it disgusted her.

But she didn't truly believe that anyone was unforgivable. Or at least – she hadn't. Before. Her fingers tightened around Luke's.

Maybe she still didn't.

But, as always, there was an aching chasm between what she thought and what she felt. What she knew to be rationally true and what she still couldn't bring herself to acknowledge. Vader, she thought, taking in the sudden cagey, haunted look on his face. He understood that exactly. But whatever she was saying, whatever she was trying to get across – and she herself wasn't quite sure – it seemed to be getting though. Vader's gaze softened thoughtfully. It was an unfamiliar look on him.

“Just people,” he said. Almost wistful, but he was a bit too sharp for that. A bit too rough to pull it off. “You're all – you're all pretty weird, you know that?”

“It's deeply alarming to me that you don't realize how equally strange all of you are in turn.”

He raised a finger, mouth opening to retort – paused. Thought about it.

“That's – probably a fair assessment,” he relented. He tilted his head towards the door, listening to something she couldn't hear. “Padmé's home.” She watched him sink into himself again, teeth worrying his lower lip. “It's getting late. My master should be back here soon, too.”

He met her gaze.

“I don't – think you're going to be able to keep all your secrets for much longer,” he said.

“Just watch me,” she told him. He huffed a laugh and shook his head.

“Well, I'll leave you with your brother and your secrets for now,” he said, good humoured but unmistakeably worried. “But I can hear Threepio preparing dinner, so I should probably apologize in advance. It shouldn't be too long now.”

“I won't be long, then,” she said, a bad feeling slinking into her gut as he slid from the room, tunic rustling, hands still jammed into his sleeves. _Family dinner_ , she thought. _Perfect_.

She looked down at her brother, preparing to express her irritation verbally, even if he couldn't hear her, and stopped short. He was already gazing up at her, blue eyes wide and confused. Awake, if only just. More alert than she'd seen him in days. Relief almost swallowed her whole.

“There you are,” she said, sinking down into the carpet, fingers tightening around his own through the sleeve of her shirt. Some of her previous irritation with General Kenobi evaporated. Whatever he had done had worked. Then: “How much of that did you hear?”

He didn't answer. Only blinked up at her, breath thready and fast, the only constant the shadowy guilt lurking at the back of his eyes. The words trapped at the back of his mouth. Her heart sank further into her chest.

“Okay,” she said, defeated. At least he was alive. At least he was awake. “Okay.” She held tight to his hand. “You must be confused. I'm not sure how much you remember. Yes, we made it to the past. Yes, getting here almost killed you, but Ben Kenobi – he knows who we are, by the way, not sure how we're going to deal with that one – did something to your brain with the Force and fixed it. Yes, that was our father that just left, no, I haven't managed to kill him yet, but don't worry, I'm working on it.” She swallowed, gauging his reaction before continuing. “Yes, we're in our mother's apartment, yes, she's as wonderful as you can imagine, yes, Han is here too, somewhere. Yes, Ahsoka somehow got pulled back with us, yes, the holocron is still missing, and yes, it probably has made it into the hands of the Force-forsaken Emperor and _yes_ , I have _no kriffing idea_ how we're going to get it back.” She scrubbed her free hand down her face, breathing hard. She'd missed having someone she could talk to freely. “Oh, _and_ , Threepio is both somehow here and currently cooking us dinner.”

Luke's brow creased.

“I _know_ ,” she said. Paused. She settled her chin back on her hands, slumping further down beside the bed. Exhausted, down to her bones, even though she'd napped half the day away. “And – Han knows. Or, sort of knows, anyway. About what happened that night.”

She still couldn't quite bring herself to say it. The Force broiled with charcoal guilt and she closed her eyes.

“But don't worry,” she forced out in a whisper. “He doesn't understand, but I'll – I'll deal with him later. We're both just glad you're alright.” She couldn't do this right now. She swallowed everything back, tightened his fingers in her own, and opened her eyes. Focused on the relief she felt until everything else dimmed. “Will you – will you say something? Anything?”

She'd overwhelmed him, she thought. Too much information at once, she could see it in his face, feel it in the race of his pulse under her grasp. But some things were constant. Even before the trauma of their arrival, before his ill-considered sacrifice, he'd been trapped. Trapped by what he had to say, trapped by what she couldn't stand to hear.

“Not that,” she whispered, knowing him far, far too well. “Please, not that.”

 _I will do whatever you ask_ , he'd said before. He would, still. His eyes skirted over hers mournfully, avoiding her gaze over bloodless lips that stayed pressed together, pulse still racing under her thumb. Drowning in guilt.

“There's dinner,” she said abruptly. Diverting transparently, but some of the tension left his face and she didn't regret it. “Soon. I know all of this is a lot, especially when – well. But – would you – can you stand? I can – I can take you to the refresher.”

His fingers escaped the trap of her grasp as he began to struggle upright, which she took for a 'yes'. Or at least – an attempt at a 'yes'. She scowled and reached to help him, swallowing back alarm at the shakiness of his arms, the way his legs buckled underneath him as he tried to stand. She locked her knees and drove her arm across his back, under his shoulder, and dragged them both upright with more force of will than physical strength. Against her, he shook.

 _Force help us_ , she thought, shying away with reluctance from the thin greyness of him in the Force, familiar and not. Her brother, torn to shreds. Flayed, on the inside. Mended slightly, thanks to Kenobi's touch, but still painfully raw.

 _Your fault_ , something inside her whispered, but she beat it back. The sentiment was nothing new by now.

“It's okay,” she gasped, steering them gracelessly towards the door. “You've basically been comatose since we got here, I'm sure – this is probably normal.”

His legs steadied the more steps they took. By the time they reached the door, she no longer had to drag them across the floor, and his hand was ground white-knuckled into her shoulder for support instead, as they made their way gingerly. She could smell dinner wafting through the arching corridor, something sweet and spicy, vaguely familiar. It was entirely likely Threepio only had a select few recipes programmed into his memory banks. Had he been serving them the same meals he'd served their mother, all those years ago? The thought made her head ache. The past was a circle. A serpent, eating its own tail.

“Here we are,” she said, breathing hard, as they finally reached the door to the 'fresher. Her hands hovered, waiting to lend assistance but not wanting to embarrass him by offering, but he didn't look to her in askance. Only stumbled through into the room on halting legs, avoiding her gaze, his metal hand grasping once at her wrist in what she knew was thanks before the door closed behind him. She waited, worry sitting hollowed out in her throat, until she heard the hiss and spit of the 'fresher's shower starting. He wouldn't be long, she knew. Even clumsy and weak, her brother was never one to waste a drop of water.

In the sudden absence of anyone who might notice, she felt her knees begin to shake. Still relief, she thought. Relief that Luke was alive, awake, warring with the knowledge that he had come back from the brink of death only to meet his end a different way. At her own hands. Sooner rather than later, with every breath she took.

She pressed her back against the wall, feeling the rumble of water through the pipes, faint heat from the steam. Blue pressed at the edges of her vision, an urgency that was not her own taking up space in her gut.

“Now is _not the moment_ ,” she hissed under her breath, pushing the presence away, wrapping the Force around herself like insulation. Insulation from the Ahsoka's encroach, growing ever stronger, insulation from the scraping rawness of her brother, the roiling despair that ached to swallower her too. Insulation from the unfamiliar brightness of the Force, the sharp, raw power of Vader. It was all too much. Too much, and she'd brought it on herself, she'd brought them here, she'd lost the holocron, she'd thrown her brother to the mercy of the ancient Sith, she'd befriended the man she was trying to kill, she'd alienated her husband, she'd _lost their son_ –

And Ahsoka was right. She was running out of time.

She stood there, a knuckle shoved into her mouth to discourage the frustrated sob that wanted to emerge, arms wrapped around herself, lost in thought, until a hand touched her elbow gently. Flesh and blood, and free of grime for the first time in days. She raised her head to meet Luke's gaze, his hair damp and curly, face pale but clean. Worried.

“I should be looking at you like that,” she said. He shook his head. Grimaced at the motion and tilted alarmingly. Her arms snatched out to grab him.

“Come on,” she said, resigned. “I'm fine, I promise. Let's get you sitting. And when we're out there – just. I don't know. _Roll with it_.”

Like she even had to ask, probably. They shuffled through the corridor and out into Amidala's living space, early evening sun throwing soft, orange light through the open archways. Coruscant breathed beyond it, moving and alive. She felt Luke's breath catch at the sight of it.

Ahsoka and Vader were nowhere in sight, but Han was already seated at the dining table, slumped in a chair by the edge as Threepio puttered around him, adjusting place settings. It was a disconcertingly familiar scene. She almost hated to interrupt it.

“Han,” she said quietly, fingers white against Luke's elbow. To steady herself, or to keep him from running, she wasn't sure. She couldn't see his face, but she knew him, could feel his blood humming under her grasp, his entire body tense. Ready to bolt. Not that he would get very far if he tried, on those shaky legs.

“You're awake,” Han said, shifting to face them, scowling as Threepio leaned in front of him to adjust the table's centrepiece. There was relief in his voice, if you knew how to find it. But the silence that followed was thick with tension, uncomfortable, wrong. “I – ”

“There you are,” Amidala interrupted warmly, entering from the kitchen, cutting the tension without realizing. Her gown was a deep red today, the sleeves a neutral beige, flared at her wrists, her hair piled on top of her head in a series of complicated braids held together by an even more complicated head piece. “Oh,” she said, starting at the sight of Luke, upright and among the conscious. “Oh, no,” she said, pulling out a dining chair, face darkening. “ _Sit_ , please,” and before Leia could find it in herself to react Luke was pulled from her grasp and settled in the chair, a blanket unearthed in a matter of seconds from the nearby sitting couch and wrapped around his shoulders. His fingers curled around the edge of it uncertainly. In the Force, Leia felt like she'd been gut-punched.

“Senator Amidala, this is my brother,” she said softly, cringing away internally from the roil of the Force. _Roll with it, roll with it_. “Luke, this is – ”

But he already knew.

“Padmé, please,” Amidala insisted, smiling back at her, blind to Luke's shell-shocked wonder. “As we've already discussed. I'm so glad you're alright,” she said to Luke, still smiling, seemingly unperturbed by his silence. She looked back at Leia, dark eyes catching the evening light. “Master Kenobi was able to help, then?”

“Yes,” Leia said. “We're very grateful.”

Amidala nodded, face still and pleasant, but underneath the mask Leia caught a flash of unease. She watched Amidala war with herself for a moment, her need for subtlety matched by her clear desire for some answers.

“Anakin said he left in a hurry,” she said mildly, hedging her bets somewhere in between.

Leia could play that game, too.

“Yes,” she said. “Jedi business, or so I heard.”

“It always is,” Amidala replied, unreadable. “Well, he'll be back soon. He'll be joining us for dinner.”

“Do you dine together often?” Leia was curious despite herself. It certainly seemed as though they were all friends of a sort, despite themselves.

Amidala smiled ruefully. “Not as often as I'd like. Usually only when disaster is about to strike, unfortunately.” She swallowed, eyes flickering only briefly with well-concealed worry. “My evenings are usually taken up with diplomatic dinners if I'm lucky, and report drafting if I'm not. And the others – well. There's a war going on.” Her expression grew distant. “I'm lucky if I get to see them at all, most months.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's just how things have to be. Until the war is over.” She shook her head dismissively. “I'm sure you understand. But like I said, Obi-Wan will be here soon, and Ahsoka and Anakin are – ”

There was a distant crash, followed by a muttered stream of Huttese cursing. Amidala's face tightened comically.

“ – _finished_ sparring on the balcony.” She took a breath. “ _Ani_!”

“ _Sorry_!” Came the distant reply, dripping in chagrin. Amidala shook her head, the jewels on her hairpiece catching the light.

“I should just stop trying to keep potted plants out there,” she muttered, more to herself. “I never learn.”

Darth Vader, scourge of the galaxy, a menace to decorative foliage. Leia felt her head begin to pound again.

“Can I help you with anything?” she asked, before she lost herself to that increasingly complicated train of thought. “You've done so much for us.” Luke and Han were very studiously avoiding each other's gazes, and were emotionally stunted enough at the best of times that she thought she could probably trust them to keep everything suitably repressed if she left the room for a minute.

“In theory, Threepio can handle it,” Amidala said, her mask back in place, smiling with a glint of humour. “But I was going to put the wine out myself, if you'd like to help. It's a bit less – replaceable, if you know what I mean.”

Worth more credits than Threepio's scrap metal body, on the very likely chance that he managed to drop it, was what that meant, but Amidala was too polite to say it. Leia bit back a smile, though her head still pounded. Some things didn't change.

“Of course.”

She followed Amidala into the kitchen and held her arms out to receive a set of seven glasses, which she held gingerly. They were real transparisteel, not her preferred Han-proof plastisteel, and engraved on the edges, swirls and lines of Naboo artistry catching the dim, artificial light of the kitchen. Very fine, and very old. Amidala picked up the wine herself from a cloth-covered serving table.

“I couldn't help but notice,” she said, her back to Leia, her voice low. Leia caught another hint of that warring edge, between politeness and curiosity. Amidala skirted the line well. “Your brother – does he speak?”

“When I first met him, he'd talk your ear off if you let him,” she said, memories of their early days pulling at her ankles, his good-natured grin stamped onto the back of her mind. She hadn't seen him smile in weeks, now. “But – something happened. Before we left. I'd rather not talk about it.” Her lips pressed together. She kept her grip on the wine glasses ginger and careful with a force of will. “We all have different ways of dealing with everything, I suppose.”

 _I asked him not to leave, and so he disappeared inside_.

Amidala turned, brows drawn together in sympathy.

“I understand,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

“Well, it's like you said. Sometimes things just are the way they are.” _That's why I'm here_ , she didn't say.

“We can only do our best to deal with what we're given,” Amidala agreed, a hint of steel colouring her tone. Determination, not resignation. For the briefest moment, Leia envied it. Missed it, even. That clear-headed stubbornness, that optimism. “And your husband?”

“What about him? He'll still happily talk your ear off given the opportunity, if you let him.”

“That's not what I'm asking.”

Too sharp, too sharp, by half. Amidala was as shrewd as they came, but too gracious to invite censure. Leia envied that, too. But they were creeping closer to the truth, all of them. Maybe Vader's earlier pronouncement had been right.

“Just a disagreement,” Leia said quietly, giving in for now, brow creasing at the sympathy spreading across Amidala's face. If she let the truth out in increments, maybe she could conceal the larger pieces for a little while longer. “Nothing new, I promise. If we don't have it out for each other at least once a day, I get nervous.”

“That sounds terrible.”

 _Better than keeping it all swallowed back_ , Leia thought, _and saving it for when the honeymoon's over_. But she didn't say it. She frowned. “Don't you fight? You and General Skywalker?”

“Oh, we're not – ” Amidala protested, too well made-up to go truly pale, though her eyes went wide. She recovered quickly. “You've misunderstood. Jedi aren't permitted to have relationships outside of the Order,” she said. “Not – in the traditional sense, anyway.”

“Of course,” Leia said, far too tired to dance around the charade. “So. Don't you fight?”

Amidala pursed her lips. Outmatched. “I suppose,” she said, carefully, “that we don't really ever – talk about the things that we disagree about.”

Now there was one hell of a warning sign, but Leia kept her face carefully blank, even as pity and unease unsettled her stomach. Her first real glimpse under the mask, and it was becoming clearer every second she remained here how all of it had come to be. They were drowning in their own secrets, this odd, misshapen family, and they couldn't even see it.

“That sounds terrible,” she echoed softly, watching Amidala's face closely, her hauntingly familiar features dogged by an unfamiliar expression.

“Maybe,” she said after a moment. But the mask didn't crack. The ensuing silence was broken by the chiming of the door annunciator.

“I'll get it!” she heard Ahsoka shout from the balcony, her distant feet skidding across the marble. Leia felt herself grow cold. Kenobi was here. She could feel him in the Force if she tried, his calm, solid presence. A buffer, against the frantic iridescence of Vader and Ahsoka.

“I'll leave the rest to Threepio,” Amidala said, gliding past her without another word. “Shall we?”

Leia followed, swallowing back her reluctance, trying not to step on the train of Amidala's gown. She herself wasn't exactly dressed for dinner, she realized belatedly, stepping back out of the kitchen. Earlier in the morning, she'd dressed in the clothes she'd arrived in, and though they were freshly laundered, they weren't exactly dinner-worthy. She hadn't thought to change. Although, she thought dryly, taking in the sight of Han, far too casually sprawled in his chair and wearing his favourite smuggling shirt, Luke, hair still damp and wearing a blanket like a cape, and Vader and Ahsoka, drenched in sweat and somehow inevitably splattered with some sort of engine oil, she wasn't exactly the worst-dressed out of the lot of them. And Amidala, despite her elegance, seemed perfectly used to it.

She helped Amidala place the wine glasses and took a seat between Luke and Han, still avoiding each other, across from the other three. Kenobi took his hesitant place at the head of the table, though he was clearly uncomfortable. He nodded in her direction as he sat, taking in Luke, awake and alert, with an unreadable expression.

“I'm so glad you could join us,” Amidala said to him, smiling, seemingly content despite the reason for their gathering. Beside her, Vader's worried scowl dropped suspiciously and Leia got the distinct impression that he had just been kicked in the shin. “No matter the reason.”

“Of course,” Kenobi said, not relaxing an inch, though he smiled in return. Leia felt her gut churn. The constant reminder of how close they all were, in combination with the knowledge of how collectively _doomed_ they all were was stomach-turning in itself. The encroach of the truth, the urgency she felt like a buzz at the back of her neck, something alien and outside herself, all of it was combining into a sickness at the base of her throat. She hadn't eaten since the morning, but had no desire to now, in spite of the late hour. “I'm sure that together we can get to the bottom of all of this.”

“The holocron,” Vader said, oddly tentative, as Threepio leaned in between him to place a bowl of warm and savoury-smelling broth. “Did you find anything more? That's what you were doing this afternoon, right? Wading into the archives?” His nose wrinkled, and for a moment he was the spitting image of her brother.

There was palpable tension between them still, but they were clearly practiced at working around it. Kenobi ignored his apprentice's hesitance, but looked at him directly, a hint of dryness working its way across his face. “Yes, in fact,” he said. “And you should all be grateful I was able to avoid Master Nu. I made the mistake of attempting to mislead her once as a padawan and I have never since attempted it.”

Beside her, Luke, silent as stone, almost as still, was listening intently. Drinking in the sight of Kenobi and their father, the life they were peripherally describing that he had only ever been able to imagine. There was no jealousy or anger in the Force, but then, she would never have expected it from him. Not anymore, at least. Only a whisper of longing, charred and frail.

“And? Did you find anything?” Ahsoka's foot was banging rhythmically against a table leg, and Leia couldn't tell whether it was impatience or exuberance. “Anything to help us get it back?”

“Nothing like that, I'm afraid,” Kenobi said. “A few potential avenues of research, but our best option is likely to first retrieve it before doing anything else.”

“Forgive me,” Leia said, taking a deliberately casual sip of her wine to hide her racing pulse. “But that holocron belongs to my brother and me. I appreciate your help in retrieving it, but once we have it back what we do with it is our business alone.”

“The Jedi Order is not in the habit of leaving dangerous Sith artefacts in the hands of outsiders,” Kenobi said, just as casual. He took a spoonful of soup.

 _Outsiders_. It stung, but not for the reason he thought. She looked to Luke, who gazed back at her with tired eyes and a slightly raised eyebrow. Dry. _I will do whatever you ask_ , he had said. _But you did kind of bring this on yourself_ , his face said now.

“We can discuss it later,” she said tightly, knuckles white around her soup spoon. It wouldn't really matter by then, she supposed. As long as it was out of the Emperor's hands. That was the only hang-up in her plan so far, really. Once she got the holocron back, she could resume carrying it all out without worrying about the fallout. And even the order of that didn't matter so much, but she was far too good a military commander to waste valuable resources before she absolutely had to. As long as Vader was helping her find the holocron, he was useful to her.

That was what she had to keep telling herself, anyway.

“In the meantime, we're grateful,” she said. “For all of your assistance.”

“This is no small problem,” Kenobi said, and the words themselves were not accusatory. But she knew what he knew, and they stung more than they should have. “I'm simply glad we could help.”

Han took an undignified gulp of wine and settled sullenly against his chair, and her brother, blinking lethargically, was clearly a few ominous seconds away from face-planting into his soup. She watched as his fingers tightened in the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, as he swallowed back a yawn. Amidala noticed too, and her face softened imperceptibly. She raised an elegant hand as Leia moved to stand.

“Please, stay,” she said. “I'll take him back to your room.”

She waited for him to protest, but he didn't. A testament to how tired he was, and normally that alone would have been cause for worry, but even like this he was so much more vibrant and alive than he had been that all she could bring herself to feel was relief and concern, mingled like a tonic. She tugged at his sleeve as Amidala – Padmé, she allowed herself to think; anyone who could care that much about her brother after only just having met him was owed the dignity of a first name – came around to help him up. He tugged back, gently. Looked down at her as he rose, exhausted, worried. More than a little bit confused, but she couldn't blame him for that.

“Later,” was all she said, quietly. “Don't worry about anything, for now.” And she breathed shallowly, harshly, as he was led away by their mother. It was a tableau that she would never have been able to even imagine, once. Impossible and wonderful and tainted horribly by circumstance.

And she'd been awake to follow the whole affair.

“Still not talking,” Han observed softly, not warm, but not rude, under the cover of the light, awkward conversation that had ensued. Not even angry, just – _Han_. Han trying his best to deal with something he could barely bring himself to touch, and in any other moment she could have found more sympathy, _should_ have found more sympathy, but tonight –

“He only just woke up,” she said. Blue again, just the faintest hint, buzzing at the edges of her sight. The sun was just beginning to set. “Give him time.”

He shook his head and went back to his soup. She didn't blame him. He deserved better, and some of the time he even knew it. But there was still an urgency thrumming in the air, an edge of something sharp, drawing her focus –

“Returning to the problem of the holocron's retrieval,” Kenobi was saying, though she was barely listening. “I understand your reluctance to give us any helpful details. But you understand that in turn makes it very difficult to help you further in any substantial way. You clearly have some familiarity with the holocron you've lost. What about it makes it so dangerous in the wrong hands?”

“ _You wouldn't believe them if they told you_ ,” a familiar voice whispered, sounding tinny, far away, and they all startled, the Force rippling and churning, and Leia swore loudly –

– as Ahsoka's older, luminous form manifested inconveniently at the end of the table, arms crossed, almost comically displeased.

In the sudden silence, a fork dropped to the ground with an awkward, echoing clang.

“ _What_ ,” Vader sputtered.

“Hmm,” Kenobi said thoughtfully, brow creasing.

“ _I said you couldn't keep me away forever_ ,” the ghost said, looking at Leia directly, the sternness of her face a far cry from her younger counterpart's wide-eyed shock. The Force rippled again, cool and blue and unmistakeably disturbed.

“I didn't think that meant you'd be dropping by for family dinner,” Leia said frostily, surprise and sudden fury stabbing at her chest. Derailed, again. Nothing ever went according to plan. “Do you have any idea what you've just done?”

“ _What I have to_ ,” she said steadily. “ _You of all people should understand that_.”

“Just _what_ is going on here?” Vader demanded, face bone white, knuckles ground into the table. The Force swooped and shook, upended, uneasy. Ahsoka – his Ahsoka, her own lips bloodless, her young eyes wide – grabbed onto his wrist, in comfort, in warning. Leia wasn't sure. “This is some trick. Some – _Separatist trap_ –”

Their Ahsoka's form shimmered and shook at the head of the table, gazing at the chaos she had created serenely.

“ _I'm not a trick_ ,” she told him. “ _You can feel it. I know you can._ ”

He stood abruptly, stalking across into the open sitting room, hands flexing. His Ahsoka scrambled after him, keeping a wary eye on her glowing counterpart. Shaken. It wasn't every day you were confronted by your own ghost. General Kenobi moved to stand too, far more calmly.

“Anakin,” he said mildly, gazing back at Ahsoka's ghostly form with curiosity. A hint of unease, Leia thought. But he hid it well. “She's not a trick.”

Vader turned back in surprise.

“How would you – ” he sputtered. “Is everyone in on this except for me?”

“I don't know what's going on either,” Ahsoka hissed beside him, staying close. Her face was set in a glare, but a nervous swallow gave her away. She was just as afraid as he was. Just as confused.

“Except for me and Snips,” he amended, a hand briefly landing on her shoulder and squeezing. “ _Who_ – ”

Leia stood, Han rising with her, a hand hovering near her elbow. Kenobi's piercing gaze met her own. Her blood ran cold. _Time's up_ , she thought dully, heart pounding. There was certainly nowhere to run.

“Not a trick, Anakin,” Kenobi said, his face almost weary in the dim evening light. He finished rising slowly, unarmed, hands at his side. Stared at Ahsoka's flickering form with an unreadable expression. “That is Ahsoka Tano. And if I'm right,” though by the sound of his voice he was certain he was, and hated it, “she was pulled back in time. Along with your children.” He paused, swallowing. “The holocron. That's what it does. That's why it's so coveted.”

There was a long, painful silence. Ahsoka's ghost said nothing, lips tightening, her eyes old and weary. Not denying.

“No,” Vader said, his voice cracking. “ _No way_.” His hand found purchase on his Ahsoka's shoulder again, the knuckles white. “That's impossible.”

“That's _crazy_ ,” his Ahsoka interrupted, face still bloodless. She looked from her ghostly counterpart to Leia and Han, incredulous. “Like something out of a bad holo soap.” Her brow creased, something occurring to her. “Why – why would you even come here? Why would _I_ come back here?”

“That,” Kenobi said, hands folding neatly into his sleeves, face stern, “ is the question of the hour.”

“ _He's right. I was pulled_ ,” their Ahsoka answered, before Leia could interrupt. “ _I didn't choose to come here. I was too close when they were sent back. I got – caught_.”

“Just – _wait_ ,” Vader hissed, face dark with panic, the Force growing viscous and cold around them. More familiar every second, and for a moment Leia was surprised. And then – she was almost glad for it. It was so easy to forget, here. Easy to forget who he was, easy to forget who they all were. “Hold on a second here, are we just – just going to accept this at face value? This is clearly some elaborate Separatist plot that you're all just _buying into_ – ” His eyes found Kenobi's. “Master,” he pleaded. “Master, you know I – ”

She was too numb to feel bad, too numb to feel anything, even the distant terror she knew was pounding at her throat, up her spine, but it was an awful thing despite it all. To watch his life, his secrets, implode like a house of sabbac cards and know that she had been the one to topple it.

“I know,” Kenobi said, his voice cold and tight, his eyes pained. “And so do you, Anakin. I'm afraid this truth is rather hard to dispute.”

The terror she wasn't feeling – it wasn't just hers. Vader's eyes met her own, wide, panicked. Hurt.

“This whole time,” he said, breathing sharply, quickly. “This whole time, you – ”

She nodded. He closed his eyes, jaw jumping, maneuvering Ahsoka behind him without thought, protectively. Almost paternally. That hurt more than anything.

“Why are you here?” he asked in a rasp. His eyes opened.

She felt so far away. This wasn't how she'd intended anything to happen.

“The future we come from,” she said, distant. Han's fingers wrapped around her elbow. Ben's eyes glared at her from the back of her head. “You can't imagine it. I made a choice. A sacrifice.” She swallowed. “It was going to be so simple.”

But their Ahsoka shook and wavered at her evasion, warping in anger. “ _This is not a choice_ ,” she hissed, as close to fury as Leia had ever seen her, shimmering in the dimness. She couldn't move very far – it was possible she couldn't move at all. She had the look of something barely held together, a singular piece out of a force of will and little else. “ _It's not sacrifice. It's just selfishness. I keep telling you. All you're doing is leaving this world in darkness._ ”

“Leia, what is she talking about?” Vader demanded, too close to the truth, too close to the edge. “What choice, what sacrifice?”

She was stronger than all of them knew, and she'd lost more than they would ever understand, now. _Get out_ , she thought, feeling a pang of remorse in the pit of her stomach that lasted only a second at the startled look on Ahsoka's face, and she wound the Force around them, parted Ahsoka's presence like air, like the gust of phantom wind that was now whipping around Padmé's apartment.

“ _Stop doing that!_ ” she heard, a whisper that faded into air, and the curtains shook as the blue of her dissipated too. The cabinet with the box of weapons flew open, the charred, rusted blaster flying into Leia's hand before she'd even registered that she wanted it.

“Enough of this,” she said, voice shaking, hardly a whisper. This was it. Her breaking point. Damn the rest of it, damn the Emperor. She would deal with it as it came. This was her moment. “ _Enough_.” Her aim found Vader, rendered uncharacteristically speechless, hurt pooling in his eyes. Betrayed. “What's important,” she breathed, “is what grows beyond us.”

“Leia,” Padmé said, from the hallway. The compassion on her face and in her tone did nothing to dispel the quiet determination she radiated. Or take away from the fact that a tiny blaster pistol was now aimed, unerringly, in their direction. Her hands didn't shake. Leia had no doubt that she wouldn't miss. “You're guests in my home,” she said mildly, impossibly composed, every inch the steely figurehead that had stared down the Trade Federation. “Please do me the simple courtesy of not murdering my husband in my own sitting room.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Is it really a family dinner if no one literally tries to erase said family from existence afterwards? asking for a friend)
> 
> wow, long time no see, huh? sorry for the long wait between chapters! sadly I'm one of those unfortunate people that tends to be less productive in the summer - my apologies, the next instalment will hopefully be a little bit more timely.
> 
> uh. especially after that fastball special of a cliffhanger, right?
> 
> really exciting on my end to finally start pulling all of this together, and I hope for you as well! .
> 
> in the meantime, thank you so much for reading, and I'd love to hear what you thought!
> 
> \- W


	11. xi.

Funny how it was the words from her mouth that carried more weight than the blaster in her hands. Leia felt ice in her throat, flooding her veins, the Force a tightly held thread, quivering. The last stitch undone, in the false tapestry she'd woven.

“You're...married.”

It wasn't what she had been intending to say, but the words escaped breathily from her mouth despite herself. She felt her fingers loosen their grip on the blaster hilt in shock, barely noticing as Han ducked in closer to remove it from her grasp. He slid it far away from them, and the sound of it skittering across the polished marble of Padme's elegant floor broke the silence suspended in the air, broke the tension, so thick it felt like the only thing holding her up. In its absence she felt her knees start to tremble, felt the edges of vacuum at the centre of her chest, the sucking, all-encompassing grief that had stolen her brother, that she'd been fending off with ideas of purpose and justice and a twisted kind of faith that the universe could be righted. But she was wrong, wasn't she, she'd come ready and willing to destroy them all, blast them into oblivion without a thought, but it was so much harder than she'd thought it would be, so much more difficult to end a monster when he wasn't even a monster yet, when the life they'd stumbled into –

“You're married,” she said again, voice cracking, and she would have finally toppled, but Han's hands were there to catch her, his grip warm and firm against her ribcage. They sank to the floor together. “You're married and you love each other and it's still – ”

_It's still not enough_ , she was trying to say, but the words were being swallowed up by her tears, rolling hot and thick and long-delayed down her cheeks.

It all would have been so much easier to bear, if they'd just walked into a disaster.

If Anakin Skywalker had been anything less than just a – a person, if he'd been a monster right from the start, if his life had been anything less than what it was –

But he wasn't a monster. His life wasn't perfect, but it was rich and full of love, full of kindness and light that was more than enough to meet the darkness, and it still – it still hadn't been enough. Hadn't been enough for him. Hadn't been enough for Ben.

That was the worst part, she thought, long overdue realization settling like lead in her gut, as she laid her cheek against Han's chest and sobbed. The worst part and the best part. She'd wanted to blame, but couldn't bear to give that blame a face, and so she'd tried to blame the universe. Sought an existential threat, when that threat was only what was given to them right from the start – a choice. They were the agents of their own destruction, every one of them. Her father, and Luke, and Ben, and Han. Herself. Maybe alone their choices would never amount to much, but when they combined, when they overlapped, when they met like streams at a river, guided by the Force –

She thought she'd seen the past repeating. She'd feared it, that repetition, that circling over, she'd thought it might be somehow written into the universe, and in the process she'd written it herself. They all had. She'd feared Vader's shadow, tried to hide from it, hide Ben from it, and driven him deeper into it. Luke had glimpsed pain and darkness and the destruction of everything he loved and in an instant – even if it had just been instinct, even if regret had soon swallowed it – had caused that destruction, if only indirectly.

If what she knew about Vader was true, then the same thing had happened to him.

If the Force had a will, it was only that they make their own choices.

She'd thought to remove that choice, but maybe it wasn't that simple. If there was nothing greater at work, no cosmic will demanding the blood of her family, demanding that everything touched by Skywalker blood be tainted, be burnt to ash, then maybe what she was trying to do would amount to nothing. Nothing but pain for the people left behind. Nothing but a new kind of darkness, a new set of choices.

A new future, but no guarantee of a better one.

_I don't know how to fix this_ , she didn't say, cheek ground into Han's chest, his hands warm around her, the Force in silent uproar. She'd been given a chance and she'd thrown it away and –

– and she was starting to think that maybe she'd been right to do so. That she'd been wrong to try in the first place, and that was even worse.

A small hand, on her shoulder. She'd missed the quiet shuffling of Padmé's gown across the marble, but now she was crouched down beside them, pale underneath her makeup, pistol abandoned at the first sign of tears.

“Is it true?” she asked, in what was almost a hush. She'd been listening, then. Waiting from the hallway. “What Obi-Wan said. Are you – ”

After all that she'd done and failed to do, Leia owed her that truth, at least. Even if it hurt.

“Yes,” she rasped through her tears, watching bleakly as the other woman's mask shattered into something pained and sharp, like an open wound. Her dark eyes flickered briefly to Vader's face, behind their odd, huddled crouch on the ground, but Leia had no idea what she found there. “Yes, it's true.”

Han's arms around her retreated but lingered as she was drawn tightly into Padme's embrace, the warm, floral scent of her filling her nose, that odd, familiar smell. It was an embrace she'd never so much as imagined. Never so much as missed, but only because she'd never known to miss it.

“I never knew you,” she breathed, chest aching, and the arms around her tightened.

“Well, now you do,” Padmé whispered, reassuring, warm. “But – why – ?”

“I can explain,” she whispered, muffled into Padmé's shoulder. She pulled away reluctantly, eyes flitting to Vader and Ahsoka, silhouetted by the last dregs of daylight beyond them. “I can explain,” she said again, hoarse, though her heart was pounding dully in her chest and their faces were obscured by the shadows. The Force was still fraught, pulled tight with lingering tension. Sour with betrayal. They would never trust her, now. She couldn't blame them. “Please. I can explain.”

But to her surprise, Han interjected, a warm hand still hovering at her elbow.

“No,” he said firmly, face twisted into a frown that she'd put there. “No. _I_ can explain.” Soft light caught his eyes as he met her gaze. “Just because they don't know anything doesn't mean you owe them anything,” he said, a protective bite in his voice that she hadn't heard for a while. “You've already lived through all of it,” he said, more gently. “Let me explain.”

Her face was already wet and so for once she didn't begrudge the dampness gathering in her eyes. The offer was tempting. So tempting, but the Force was pulled tight and there were a thousand things to do, a thousand explanations to give, a thousand reasons she had done what she'd done, and she couldn't imagine –

“I understand,” she said instead, looking back to Padmé, still kneeling beside her. “If you want us to leave. I can't – ”

“No,” she said, far more firmly than Leia had expected. “You – ” And her mouth trembled. “You're _mine_. Ours. I don't – understand any of this.” Again, her eyes flickered to Vader's, dark and unreadable, searching in the dim light. “But I understand family. You have a place here. Though I – I think we could all do with some answers.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said finally, stepping forward from the table. Leaving Vader and Ahsoka still shrouded by their own shadows, tense and still. “But in a moment, I think.” He was just as unreadable as always. But there was something in those cold eyes, some measure of familiarity, sympathy. Recognition. He could see things in her that she could barely see herself. She'd hated him for it, just a bit. Now she wondered if it might be what saved them. “Everyone calm down. Yes, I'm talking to you, Anakin. We've de-escalated the situation.”

“The situation,” Vader breathed, finally. White as a sheet. And she could feel it in the Force, that trembling, that violet terror –

His jaw snapped closed audibly.

“This is not happening,” he said, too hoarse to snap, spinning on his heels and tearing towards the door, robes whispering behind him. Ahsoka sprang after him, with an uncertain glance behind at all of them, just as shaken.

“Master!” she called, in pursuit. “ _Master_ – ”

Padmé rose, as if to follow, but a hand from Obi-Wan stopped her.

“They'll be back,” he said simply. “You know they will. Sooner than they think.”

She regarded him gracefully, mouth a grim line. “He shouldn't be alone. You know that, too.” It was almost accusation.

“Ahsoka is with him.”

“Ahsoka is a _child_.”

“He'll be back,” Obi-Wan said again, more firmly. “He'll take care of her. And she'll take care of him. Let them work through this.”

“And what if _I_ – need him?” Padmé replied, swallowing sharply. “What if I need them both?”

That seemed to stop him in his tracks. Leia shrunk back into Han's chest, feeling uncomfortable. Awkward. Like an intruder.

“He'll be back,” Obi-Wan said, one final time. Deflated. His shoulders had slumped. Hardly enough to notice. “I'm sorry, Padmé.”

“I'm not,” she told him.

By Leia's eyes, he wasn't entirely sure what to make of that. But he nodded, frowning, before returning his attention to Han and herself, still huddled on the ground. Her legs were jelly underneath her.

“We're good for a minute?” Han asked gruffly, eyeing him warily. “You mean it?”

“You're safe here,” Padmé confirmed. “As long as everyone keeps their weapons put away. But I – I need to understand. With or without Ani.”

“Of course,” Leia said, the words dragged from her throat, resentment, guilt, failure, roiling in her gut. She began to struggle to her feet. “I – ”

“No,” Han said, standing and helping her, hand grasping her forearm. He pressed her close to him as they made it upright. “I said I'd explain, and I meant it. Unless that's a problem?”

Obi-Wan said nothing.

“Are you sure you're up for it?” Leia asked, twisting her head slightly upward to look at him.

“Hey,” he protested dryly. “I've been keeping track of Skywalker drama from day one, Princess.”

That, at least, was indisputably true.

“Alright,” she muttered, grateful despite herself, grinding her heels into the tile as she found herself pulled gently towards the hallway. “Wait – no,” she protested. “I should – ”

“It's alright,” Padmé said, stepping forward. “Really. Take a moment. We should all – take a moment.”

Her eyes were glittering with – something. Leia met and held her gaze for a moment. Swallowed. She wasn't the only one reeling. Maybe she also wasn't the only one who wanted to go hide her face in a pillow for the next decade or so.

They'd come this far, waited this long. They could wait another moment.

She let Han lead her away, sinking into his side as much as she could allow herself, the fuzzy swirl of his thoughts, his presence, settling against her mind like waves on a shore. Something dependable.

“I'll be right back,” he promised over his shoulder as they turned down the hall. He brought her, still half-dazed and shaky with the sudden loss of adrenaline, to the guest room, still and quiet and dark. So far removed from the tension of the last few minutes it might as well have been another planet. She let herself be guided to the bed, a brief smile curving her mouth as Han fluffed her pillow and ridiculously, painstakingly unlaced her boots and set them on the ground.

“There,” he said quietly. Like that fixed it all.

“I'm sorry I brought you here,” she told him, voice cracking. “I'm sorry for everything.”

And Han, braver than most and so stupidly loyal, kissed her gently on the forehead and drew away.

“Take a moment,” he said, soft. “Like she said. Let me handle this. I'm gonna – I'm gonna go – ” He shuddered slightly and it brought the ghost of a smile to her lips. “I'm gonna go try to explain everything to my... in-laws. Before they turn us over to the Republic.” He paused, silhouetted in the elegant arch of the doorway, dwarfed by its height. “I love you,” he said.

A promise. An apology. A hundred hidden meanings, smuggled in with the words.

“I know,” she said.

His hand lingered on the doorway for the briefest moment, and then she was left in the quiet, peaceful gloom. It wasn't quite suffocating. It had the odd, muffled feeling that rooms got when the blinds were drawn and the darkness thick, even though you knew that the lingering afternoon light lurked. Even though you knew that the grey, cottony silence could be washed away if you only drew back the curtain and let the light in. Luke's breaths filled the room and she knew, instinctively, that he was awake. Awake, but silent. She rolled over gingerly to face him, a motionless smudge of black and grey at the bed's other edge.

When she spoke, she cut through the darkness, the whisper of her voice as sharp and bright as any lightsaber.

“I couldn't do it either.” She took a sharp breath in turn, cheeks still damp. “I thought I could, but I couldn't. I thought I didn't understand you but I – but I think I do.”

She waited for a long beat. Nothing. The Force, shifting, silent, muffled. Grey and lost to the sea.

“What you need to say,” she whispered. “I haven't been ready to hear it.”

She swallowed, throat scraping dry and uncomfortable, sheltered by the dark.

“I think I'm ready now.”

She saw him blink, the flutter of delicate eyelashes the only sign of movement. Steady breaths, still, only. But the Force sang against the back of her neck, a flicker that felt raw and unsteady and familiar and so she waited. Waited for him to drag himself back to the surface, the gloom a tangible weight across her body, the silence between them thick. Waited for him to come out of hiding.

And she waited for what felt like a very long time. Long enough that she felt the grey start to settle and crack across her skin, felt her swollen eyelids begin to droop with an exhaustion she couldn't put a name to, vacuum sucking at her chest, but his fingers twitched.

“Leia,” he breathed, a feathery rasp that tore at her own throat in sympathy, but the words didn't feel pulled from his mouth the way all the other ones had, fell from his lips with an ease that was almost frantic. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

She breathed in. Out. And it was blame that thundered through her veins, made her cheeks glow hot, made her gut twist in anguish, _you promised, you said you'd keep him safe, you promised_ , but all of it, all of it – she didn't have to swallow it. She didn't have to keep it. Didn't have to give it all to him, either. It didn't belong to him, just like it didn't belong to her. Her or Han or Ben or Snoke or anyone, alone. It was just – a burden they shared.

She didn't have to keep it.

“I forgive you,” she whispered into the dark. “ _I forgive you_.”

And she raised herself onto her knees and clambered over gracelessly to his side of the bed, pulling him up and into her arms before he could protest, burying her face in his shoulder.

“Maybe you failed,” she said, even though it hurt, feeling his arms close tentatively around her, feeling the world right around them, as much as it could. “Maybe I did too. Maybe we all failed.” She swallowed harshly. “Or maybe we all just _chose_. That's the problem, I think, maybe.” She pulled away so she could look him in the face, the sunken blue of his eyes meeting her own. “Ben made a choice, too. I just think – I think maybe he didn't think that he did. I didn't. Maybe you didn't, either. ”

“We all have a story,” Luke told her raspily. “About why things are the way they are. About how things came to be.” He swiped shakily at his eyes, swallowing carefully. Listening to him speak was agony, even if it was also the best thing she'd ever heard. But he continued, insistent. “But stories have limits. Legends, too. Especially about people. They make them into more and less than they really are. The truth is always more complicated than that.” He shook his head, looking up at her cautiously. “Ben never understood that. I think – I think maybe you never did, either.”

It was always her first instinct to bristle, but she fought it back. If she really, really thought about it – well. He was right. She'd never struggled with the nuance of bad and good except where their father was concerned. He'd always been her breaking point. Probably, he always would be. Being trapped in the past had taught her that much, at least. She'd been so single-minded about her goal, so focused on the story she'd built that when it came to down to it, she was genuinely horrified to find that –

\- she liked them.

All of them. Obi-Wan and Padmé. Ahsoka. Even – even Vader.

She'd never before taken a moment to think of what they all might have actually been like. Taken a moment to see them as people, instead of monuments. She'd come to see Vader – no. She'd come to see Anakin Skywalker as a tragic, flawed figure – a monster in the night, his lover similarly flawed, because for all that her father had spoken so highly of Senator Amidala, the truth about her, when she'd learned it, had hurt her deeply. She remembered thinking: _what kind of hero loves a monster?_

And, well. She'd answered that question herself. _Like mother, like daughter_. They weren't so different, really, the two of them. So maybe it was like Luke had said. When you made legends and myths out of ordinary people, they became more and somehow less than all that they really were. In a way, it was almost a cruel thing. The things about them that really mattered got lost in the telling, and took any sort of nuance with them. The truth was that Anakin Skywalker was more than a monster – he was teacher, traitor, father, friend. And Padmé Amidala was the same – not the weak-willed wife of a murderer, but a power in her own right, flawed as the rest of them, but no more lacking in agency. They were more than what they had left behind. More than the _stories_ they'd left behind. And if they had lived out fate once before and suffered for it, then it wasn't because they'd been lacking in choice. There was some kind of careful hope in that, if only she could find it.

For a long time, her life had been built around the protection of a legacy. The protection of a legend. The protection _from_ a legend. That was where they'd gone wrong. That was how they'd lost her son. She'd been so afraid she had no choice that it had pushed her down a path that had deprived her of it, and she'd carved that path herself. Luke, too, had carved his own path, set himself up to fulfill a legacy and left himself no leeway for failure. He had failed to live up to his legend. She'd lived up to her own spectacularly. And in the end, they both had lost.

She had no doubt that some things in the galaxy were probably written – the Force was too powerful, too old, too ancient, too much everywhere and everything to have a hand in nothing. It sought balance, if nothing else. But where did you draw the line, between inevitability and choice? How could it be that the galaxy's fate was written in stone when the Force itself could allow you to travel back and rewrite it?

She let her forehead fall down to rest on Luke's shoulder with a thunk.

“Being here is much more of a headache than I thought it would be,” she said, the sentiment feeling almost hilariously inadequate. He gave a strangled laugh that vibrated against her collar-bone and ended in a sigh.

“Leia,” he said quietly, still a little ragged around the edges. “I'm sorry. I made a mistake. I made a mistake, and I couldn't – ”

_Couldn't escape it_.

“So did I,” she countered, raising her head and fixing her face into a glare. It felt good. Better than tears. “We're Skywalkers. We break the galaxy, we fix it again. But we do it together.”

“Together,” he repeated, the barest hint of a smile lightening his face, scruffy with youth, grey with exhaustion. “Okay.”

The curtains were still drawn tightly, but she could feel it now, the encroach of evening. The sun, slipped below the horizon. The press and pull of Coruscant's night, even as the next day loomed like a shadow.

She'd have to face what she'd wrought. It was only fair.

But she wouldn't have to do it alone.

“Okay,” she said. Breathed in, out. Like a meditation. “Okay.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ('Author Hashes Out Her Own Deep Insecurities Re. Existential Purpose Through A Combination Of Star Wars Fanfic And Poorly Applied Philosophy, News At Five')
> 
> Hey kids, long-time no-see, welcome to my worldview. I'm mostly joking lol, but I am very, very fond! of the way Star Wars lets us all think things like choice and fate and and legend and destiny through in interesting ways, and I really wanted to explore those themes in this fic in a different way than I did in TTCRO, while still allowing them to - rhyme, I guess. I hope. I don't know, please never assume that I actually know what I'm talking about. But in any case, those themes kind of finally congeal together in this chapter in a way that's hopefully satisfying??
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for reading and I'd love to know what you thought! More on the way! 
> 
> \- W


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